John Edwards has been derided left, right and center for his proposal to use the apparatchiks of the IRS as health insurance enforcers. And the description offered by his campaign concerning how it would work does give one pause:
The process, according to the Edwards campaign, would resemble the process used to collect money from Americans who are delinquent on federal student loans or child support payments.
Interestingly, no one seems to have noticed that this proposal makes Edwards the only Democratic candidate with the courage of his convictions. Hillary Clinton has also proposed a mandate, but she won’t come clean about the obvious implications of that proposal.
The draconian measures Edwards has proposed, or something very much like them, would be inevitable in any serious attempt to mandate universal health care coverage. Any mandate that doesn’t include an enforcement mechanism isn’t a true mandate.
But neither Hillary nor her supporters are willing to admit this. In fact, when Barack Obama had the temerity to press Her Majesty on this very point, he was accused by Paul Krugman and others of “mudslinging” and–even worse–using “right-wing talking points.”
Mandates, as I have said before, are an extraordinarily bad idea. Thus, the health care plans put forth by Edwards and Clinton are both wrong-headed. But at least Edwards, for all his many faults, is honest enough to admit that his mandate would require enforcement.
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