Hillary Clinton was against the individual mandate before she was for the individual mandate

March 1st, 2014

In an Op-Ed last fall, I wrote how Hillary Clinton was the champion of the individual mandate during the 2008 election. Obama opposed it. After he secured the nomination, he co-opted Hillary’s policy team, and her health care reform plan. Obamacare is Hillarycare 2.0.

With the recent release from the Clinton archives, we learn that before Hillary was for the mandate, she was against the mandate, which at the time was a conservative proposal in opposition to Hillarycare.

Hillary Clinton was a vocal critic of the individual mandate during her husband’s administration, according to new documents the Clinton Presidential Library released on Friday.

“That is politically and substantively a much harder sell than the one we’ve got,” Clinton told Democratic Congressional leaders and committee chairmen in a September 1993 meeting to discuss the White House’s healthcare plan, criticizing what was then the counter-offer from centrist Republicans to her own proposals.

“Because not only will you be saying that the individual bears the full responsibility; you will be sending shock waves through the currently insured population that if there is no requirement that employers continue to insure, then they, too, may bear the individual responsibility,” Clinton continued.

Clinton’s early opposition to an individual mandate is not new information, but her now-public comments criticizing it shed new light on why she took issue with the individual mandate in 1993.

Her remarks suggest that an individual mandate would be tough to sell politically and, without an employer mandate, it could roil the healthcare system. An employer mandate is also part of ObamaCare, but the administration has delayed implementing that part of the bill.

Everyone from all sides of the spectrum has been all over this issue.