[Rashputin]

I see what you're saying and I'll go back and double check, but what I recall Newt talking about mandating was something like the uninsured motorists pool that many states have for drivers who cannot afford auto insurance because they're young or have had a lot of tickets, that kind of thing. Georgia and SC both used to have that and an awful lot of people start out driving by paying that fee because otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford any insurance. That's what I recall him talking about and if he made that more elaborate I missed it. Even at that I clearly recall him pointing out that it would be for those entering the workforce and be put in place along with deregulation of medical care to bring costs down. This was when he was Speaker and Hillarycare was being pushed. Second, I'm pretty sure he's backed off of even that due to having been convinced that no government at any level could resist expanding it to mandating what treatments were available and so on.

Various things come along sort of as a nebulous idea and people think they're reasonable until the full effects start to get reasoned through. The first time I heard Newt mention anything about mandates was as a counterpoint to Hillarycare to illustrate how if anything had to be done it didn't have to be done at the Federal level like Hillarycare. So, at least at that point in time he didn't see it as anything like RomneyCare, OmbamaCare, or anything else that dictated what services were available to who.

Regards

[Roos_Girl]

Some of the videos I’ve found of him, and perhaps the Beck interview but I don’t remember that one specifically, he is talking about wealthier people being forced to participate because some of them are opting to not buy insurance and then will skip out on their hospital bills. While I agree that, if that is indeed happening, it’s not right for the people to do, I have to wonder how that cost compares to all the illegals making use of the hospital ERs because they know they won’t have to pay anything. I suspect that that total amount is much higher than the instance Newt was talking about.

I’ve never come across him saying that the individual mandate he was talking about being at the state level, or that it was only for low income or those freshly entering the work force. Even if he had, it’s still an individual mandate and unconstitutional. I don’t see how what he’s said, as recently as 2 months ago, can be explained away. And certainly it casts much doubt on his supposed conservatism.