That's right you read that correctly. The very first congress passed a mandate. According to America Blog
The Founding Fathers loved health care mandates according to The New England Journal of Medicine
it is pointed out that of Constitution's framers most of them voted in favor of several mandates including ones on health insurance. Ship owners were required to provide health care to sailors and pay 20 cents for every month a seamen had been employed. The money was to provide health care for seamen.
Because some people were complaining that it was too onerous to require the purchase of a firearm that was require on a mandate it was voted about again and came out in favor of not changing law the 6 to 50.
So much for the framers of the constitution not being for mandates. They passed several and some had to do with health insurance.
Basically sailors got health care over two hundred years before the rest of us!
I think it is about time for the rest of us to catch up.
While a lot of things have been written and opinions stated it is my opinion that the main reason that Republicans are against Obama's health plan is not so much about the health plan itself but because they know that if this goes into effect and does half of what it is designed to do then it will do what Social Security did. After Social Security was passed the Democrats stayed in power for a long time.
We can see that the plan has many things in it Republicans have proposed passed at state levels themselves at times including Romney. So why are the so against it.
It will make the Democrats look to darned good, DUH....