This diary is not a debate on the mandates and their effectiveness, nor is it a debate about their necessity. I personally believe that these mandates are not the right way. I feel that they're set in the wrong context, and that they will have disastrous consequences in the future.
To qualify, I want to suggest a strategic way of looking at the dropping of the mandate from the HC bill. To me, the Democrats and most notably, Obama, would be smart to consider dropping the mandates. There are a few reason for this, as I see it:
Firstly, dropping the mandate enables the Administration to "answer" the squeamish popularity of the bill. We know that generally speaking, the mandates have very low approval. 38 states are considering legislation that would effectively disregard the federal mandate. These proposed legislation have very high approval in their respective states. The mandate is a big issue for a lot of folks. Most don't care about the mathematics of risk pooling as the Administration sees it, therefore they remain unpopular.
Dropping the mandates is the "responsive" thing to do. Simply put, they would have the opportunity to tell the American people that they "listened to them", and were responsive and transparent. Not to mention, the bill would gain popularity immediately off the bat, putting people back in the game.
Secondly, dropping the mandates would give them somewhere to go if things go wrong with this bill. We all basically agree that this bill does very little to address the real core issue of American HC - it's safe to assume that costs won't drop much at all, and may rise only at a slightly slowed rate. Insurance companies have been largely satisfied with most of the loose or nonexistent language in this bill, which tells me that things won't actually change all that much, as far as the numbers go.
Therefore, if this bill ends up doing nothing to address the issue, they can blame the lack of mandates, and potentially reframe the debate. They can basically announce : "Well, we gave the INSURANCE MARKET a chance to regulate itself, and we gave them a chance to do the right thing for the American people, but they have failed. Therefore we need to strongly move toward a more equitable, public system.".
I think this is a huge part of the strategy that could be implemented. To be sure, I feel the mandates are ineffective to begin with, without cost control measures of a real, unequivocal sort. The mandates guarantee nor advance any real reform in health insurance.
A mandate is only effective in a non-profit, publicly owned system. In this case, the mandate would effectively be an assessed tax, as any other tax. With mandates intact, the bill will (in my opinion) have dramatic consequences for the Democrats as a whole, and the future of Health Care reform.
If these mandates are a part of this bill when it begins to fail and cast doubt, Progressives will lose a lot of ground in public support, with regard to a national health plan. Without the mandates, the Progressive cause has a lot of margin to rally support for publicly taking over health care.
Of course, I know there are many who somehow believe that these mandates are necessary and the bill won't work without them. There are other who contend that they will be ineffective anyway, so don't worry about them. The reality is that it's all conjecture as of now. But one thing has been proven time and time again, without fail........ when a private market is given the benefit of soft regulation, it wreaks havoc. We all know this to be true. Therefore, I cannot be trusting when the Administration predicts a real "downscaling" in HC costs. It never goes in our favor, UNLESS it is written in our favor. Never.
So I say drop the mandates. For starters, it's the right thing to do morally. There is no moral equivalent for forcing people into a PRIVATE market, without PUBLIC oversight and accountability. And in my humble estimation, it is the very best path to a national health plan, much sooner than it would come otherwise.