It is not surprising given Jonathan Gruber’s strong support for an individual mandate and his prominent role in both “Romneycare” and “Obamacare” that he is working hard to defend the idea with a new paper for the Center for American Progress attacking “alternatives” to his preferred policy. Overall, I find his case weak and extremely [...]

Health care reform has steadily decreased in popularity since its passage as the Kaiser tracking poll shows; the individual mandate is deeply and extremely unpopular. Using the IRS to force Americans to buy a product from one of the most unpopular industries in America is so clearly a terrible idea that Democratic congressional candidates in contested races should think about suing the White House and their leadership for gross political malpractice. (If only some progressive blog had warned them about how unpopular the individual mandate would be without a public option.)

Documents provided to Congress by several large companies show that they are seriously considering dropping their employer-provided health insurance coverage because the new health care law contains a very weak employer mandate. Companies are doing the math and realizing that paying a per-employee penalty to the government for not providing coverage is substantially less than [...]

The newly passed health care law is not popular, and Republicans are starting to line up behind a political strategy of calling for its repeal. While true repeal seems like a legislative impossibility, the political strategy might work. When forced to choose between the false duality of this new health care law or no law, [...]

Steven Pearlstein, in his column today, attempts to address the issue of our broken Senate and the problems with bipartisanship. He rightly address how the system should work, even though it clearly does not. The only way a democratic system like ours can work is if the majority party acknowledges that winning an election means [...]

A lot of the focus about how to fund health care reform has directed at the two largest taxes in the House and Senate bill. The House bill contains a so-called millionaire’s tax (raises $460 billion) while the Senate bill contains an excise tax on employer-provided health insurance benefits (raises $149 billion). While a lot [...]

Ezra Klein is trying to make the absurd claim that this Senate bill closely resembles Obama’s campaign promises on health care reform: The health-care bill that looks likely to clear the Senate this week is not very close to the health-care bill most liberals want. But it is very close to the health-care bill that [...]

I have long maintained that progressives should accept an individual mandate only as part of a broad social contract with the government. The government must promise to ensure that every American has access to at least one quality, affordable, cost-effective health insurance plan, and only then can it demand Americans buy health insurance. The Senate [...]

While the House health care reform bill is the one favored by progressives, it also happens to be more small “c” conservative than that Senate bill. This is not about the public option, the size of government subsidies, or regulation. The House bill is more small “c” conservative because it would do a better job [...]

A new ABC/Washington Post poll finds support for the overall health care reform effort working its way through Congress remains nearly evenly divided in this country. Over the past few months, public opinion has solidified, leaving Obama and the Democrats with the political challenge of enacting one of the most ambitious pieces of domestic legislation [...]