First of all, it's very silly to say "Republicans were for President Barack Obama's..." anything since he was an unknown with NO health care plan until very recently. I would also note that States are different from the Federal government.
From the comments...
This is entirely misleading. While it is true that Mandating Health Insurance coverage was considered necessary for MA's health reform to work, that is not the general consensus of what most Republicans think is right. Mandating the public to buy any private product is plain and simple an affront on free market trade. Romney, while being a good man is a Republican from a very liberal state, and really doesn't always represent the mainstream of what "Republicans think".
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Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill has a less rosy take on the MA plan... ?It has been a fiscal train wreck,? Cahill wrote in yesterday?s Wall Street Journal. Without federal assistance, ?Massachusetts would be broke.?
The independent candidate for governor said the state?s commitment to provide health insurance for all its citizens has cost more than anyone imagined.
Advocates told taxpayers that universal coverage would cost them $88 million a year, but in the first four years, the total tab was $4 billion, Cahill said.
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General discussion
mandatory H.C. - GOP for it, before they were against it...
Republicans were for President Barack Obama's requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it.
The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that's been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach.
Mitt Romney, weighing another run for the GOP presidential nomination, signed such a requirement into law at the state level as Massachusetts governor in 2006. At the time, Romney defended it as "a personal responsibility principle" and Massachusetts' newest GOP senator, Scott Brown, backed it. Romney now says Obama's plan is a federal takeover that bears little resemblance to what he did as governor and should be repealed.
"The idea of an individual mandate as an alternative to single-payer was a Republican idea," said health economist Mark Pauly of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In 1991, he published a paper that explained how a mandate could be combined with tax credits ? two ideas that are now part of Obama's law. Pauly's paper was well-received ? by the George H.W. Bush administration.
"It could have been the basis for a bipartisan compromise, but it wasn't," said Pauly. "Because the Democrats were in favor, the Republicans more or less had to be against it."
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I'm curious if those who are better informed than I am can comment on its accuracy.
As best I can tell, Mr. Romney says his main objection to the bill is that he believes mandates for insurance should come from the state rather than from the feds. I didn't see any clear delineation of specific objections from other Republicans who might have voted for the idea before they voted against it.
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I see the state vs. federal point. In past discussions of this, car insurance was mentioned, but usually it went into a right vs. privilege direction. Let's look at it in a state vs. federal way.
Currently, the auto insurance requirement is by the states. Considering the requirement to be insured, should the feds require it, and like health insrance, set up similar coverage rules? Should all insurance companies be required to sell to someone with the "pre existing condition" of several DUI's?
How about personal property loss? When a tornado, flood, or other disaster hits, you see stories about people who didn't have personal property insurance, and lost everything. With health care, we heard stories of bankruptcy, and I dare say that it also happened to people after a disaster loss. So, should the federal government also require everybody to get personal property insurance, and fine them if they do not?
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