Facts Are First Casualty of Health-Care Fight (Bloomberg)

For 20 years before President Obama’s health reform law, the central tenet of Republican’s health care policy was an individual mandate. It was the alternative to the single-payer system proposed by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and to the employer mandate proposed by President Clinton in 1993. As governor, Mitt Romney enacted a mandate in Massachusetts in 2006. As the most likely presidential nominee for the Republicans, he now says the mandate is only permissible at a state level. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was against an individual mandate, but accepted it in 2009 as a compromise. And a recent poll found two-thirds of voters are against the mandate, but support the provision that prohibits insurers from denying pre-existing conditions despite the fact that the two are inextricably linked.