More on those damn socialists!
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/the_founders_health-care_manda.htmlIf you read Rick Ungar's excellent explanation of the bill, you'll see it was a bit different than the individual mandate: It was a payroll tax that all sailors on private merchant ships had to pay, and in return, they were basically given access to a small public health-care system. But it was, in essence, a regulation against a form of inactivity: You were not allowed to not do something, in this case, pay for sailor's health insurance.
And by the way, if conservatives really do prefer a system of payroll taxes that purchase you public insurance to the private system envisioned in the Affordable Care Act, I'm sure there are a lot of liberals who would vote for a bill that repealed the Affordable Care Act and replaced it with Medicare-for-all.double tee hee!
