New audio has surfaced from 2009 of Newt Gingrich embracing health insurance mandates. The key takeaway:
The real foundation, the most important, uh, part of this is individual rights, responsibilities, and expectation of behavior.
Uh, we believe that there should be must-carry, that everyone should have health insurance, or if you’re absolute, uh, libertarian we would allow you to post a bond. But we would not allow people to, uh, be free riders failing to ensure themselves and then showing up in the emergency room, uh, with no means of payment. Uh, if you have, uh, must carry, then the insurance companies have told us that we can have must-issue and you will therefore have a system in which you don’t have to worry about cherry picking and maneuvering. As we move beyond today’s press conference, this is kind of general model we’re going to be advocating…
And you can even hear it for yourself:
As the blog Verum Serum points out:
But the real news here I think is that this clip really should dispel once and for all any questions over Gingrich’s support for a national health insurance mandate. Somewhat strangely he’s never really denied supporting the mandate, and in fact as late as May of last year reiterated essentially the same position on Meet the Press. Yet throughout the campaign he has said repeatedly that it is “clearly unconstitutional”, and more recently claimed absurdly that he has only ever supported state level mandates.
Well, here you have it: not only has Gingrich been a long-standing proponent of a federal health insurance mandate, he clearly and unequivocally called for it as part of the White House health reform initiative in May 2009. Mission accomplished then.
There is something else worth noting in this clip. Not only did Gingrich make the “conservative” argument for the mandate in dealing with the free rider problem, he also advanced a favorite argument of the left. Which is that the only way insurers could be required to offer coverage to everyone regardless of their health status (“must issue”), was to require everyone to carry insurance. This was ultimately the argument which convinced none other than Barack Obama, who remember, opposed an individual mandate during the Democrat primary campaign in 2008.
Yet with all this proof of what Newt really stands for we still have his supporters that will try to spin it, just the same way so many think Newt is totally 2nd amendment while ignoring him claiming that in 1996 while working behind the scenes for better gun control. Nothing this man says can be trusted – just ask the two former Mrs. Gingrich.