By itself, a mandate takes the principle of universal health care--health care as a right, not a commodity--and then it robs it of all meaning, by devolving responsibility for health care onto the individual.

That sentence makes no sense at all Does it mean that 'health care as a right has been robbed of it's meaning when pool participants are required to contribute to the pool?'

Any universal health care plan
worth a damn must pool risk (which will lower everyone's health care
costs), and that means preventing insurance companies from
cherry-picking healthy people and turning away sickies or oldies.

I agree with that statement as far as it goes. The plan must also deal with the cherry pickers on the consumer side as well. If you set up a plan that says "If you're young and healthy and don't want to buy health ins now, you can opt in when you get sick," I believe that program is headed for failure.

I believe that you and I have similar desires...ie universal single-payer health care without insurance company involvement?...but, like the candidates, disagree on the best approach to achieving them. Bur goal is the same and if your candidate wins the nomination, as appears likely at this point, I will still jerk that donkey lever in Nov. for Obama.

Finally ... I'm glad someone took the time to explain why mandates are a "political red-herring," and not as exclusionary as Krugman and Clinton would have the public believe. I like Krugman, but he's becoming increasingly indifferent towards Obama, much the same way Frank Rich has openly demonizing Clinton.

I can't wait till the primaries are over, and we can start working on fixing this country. Health care or not, it won't matter without jobs.

Bill Clinton's leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council had, as its major strategy the tactic of "triangulating" issues.

This translated to "sounding" progressive while simultaneously incorporating Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute "values" into proposed legislation.

The real point has never been GOOD legislative proposals or consensus building. The point is the game called:

"Don't-give-the-radical-right-any-ammunition-that-could be-used-in-a-soundbyte-that-might-lose-us-the-next- election."

They call the approach "incremental."

In truth, it was gutless.

And, ineffective.

It lost more elections than it won.

But, it was GREAT for fundraising.

And for perpetuating the dialog of the deaf that has been politics since...oh...the mid-eighties, when Tip O'Neill retired from the house and the DLC took over the party.

Hillary AND John Edwards have been dedicated DLC stalwarts. (Hence the opportunistic votes FOR the Iraq war--and SO much more.)

"Mandates" are a capitulation to the AEI/Heritage Foundation narrative that the DLC is trying to appropriate while also keeping their traditional but shrinking base somewhat satisfied.

That narrative has as its main tenet the idea that poor people are poor because they don't take "personal responsibility" for things like chronic illnesses, unplanned pregnancies, bad schools, hopeless neighborhoods with crumbling infrastructure and non-existent policing, asthmatic children, maternal and infant mortality rates that should be the shame of the developed world ...in short, anyone who has not managed to reach the economic middle-class deserves any bad thing that happens to her. (I say "her" because most of the poor and uninsured in this country are female. White females, more specifically, but that's not part of the narrative.)

The sheer fact that "mandates" and "penalties" became part of this conversation BEFORE solid proposals for regulation of the health care industry did tells me that neither Clinton or Edwards has any real clue about how broken the "system" is and how much health care actually costs anyone who is not under 25, male and in the pink of health. (females of childbearing age pay more in an open insurance market where "pregnancy" is defined as an illness.)
It's not about "taking on" the insurance companies. It's about taking on our own legislators. They need to LEGISLATE regulation of the industry. But neither Clinton or Edwards would dare to say that in an era when the AEI has made the problem not an industry run amok but people who want "too much" health care and "frivolous law suits" and the dems have let them get away with it.

Obama has stated that, if necessary, he would consider imposing mandates.

He already is; (from BarackObama.com)

Mandatory Coverage of Children: Obama will require that all children have health care coverage.

Sounds like a mandate to me. Anybody know how he intends to enforce this mandate? Thanks in advance.

Employer Contribution: Employers that do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan.

Another mandate?

National Health Insurance Exchange: The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange... The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.

Mandates Lite, maybe?

Because the word "mandate" doesn't poll well, the Obama campaign made a decision early on trying to finesse the Libertarian-leaners on the center-right to vote for him. It's nothing more than a political calculation on the campaign's part.

"Which part of the mailer is untrue?"

Um, where do you want to begin? Remember Al Franken's "weasel words"? Things that are not technically "lies" but are clearly intended to mislead? Or, put another way, Everything that's come out of Karl Rove's mouth ever? This flyer is sick with them. So let's begin:

"Which of these people do not deserve health care?" The insinuation here is that the difference between Obama's plan and Hillary's is that people would be turned away from getting health care under Obama's plan. False.

And this line of attack gets more explicit and scare-monger-y on Page 2:
"Will it be YOU?"
(Here, a more honest mailer would say "Turn over for answer!" and then would have the word "NO" written in 128-point font.)

The mailer uses contested claims that 15 mil would not have health insurance to suggest that those people would be denied or left without access because... of what? their income level? pre-existing conditions? The mailer doesn't say (and even the study that came up with the number of 15 mil never charged that anyone would be "left out"-- the number is just an estimate of the healthy young folks it thinks would choose to opt out of the system). Why? Because it would be a flat-out lie to say any of these things. Instead, the piece just implies these things by declaring that Hillary's plan would "end discrimination against people with existing conditions." By contrasting this statement with the bulletpoints underneath Obama's plan (wasteful, demagogue, hates universal care), the mailer suggests, in a none-too-subtle way, that Obama's plan would not do the exact same thing with regard to preexisting conditions. Which is BS, and very, very Rovian.

Indeed, every feature of Hillary's health care plan that she talks up in her bulletpoints is shared in its entirety by the Obama plan (keeping your current plan, making care affordable for all, ending discrimination against pre-existing conditions). The only difference between the plans (a difference without a distinction, as I hope I've shown in my past posts) is that her plan involves some vague notion of mandates (a word, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found in the piece). But the average reader would wouldn't know that. Which is the point.

On the last page of the mailer, the Clinton stoops to perhaps its lowest level yet, by taking advantage of a man who with obvious psychological problems. For a campaign that claims to be concerned with health care, you'd think Hillary would show more concern for the clearly troubled Paul Krugman, instead of choosing to display his logorrhea and angry derangement on the back of the mailer for the world to see. For shame, Hillary, for shame.