Mitch Daniels' Office On Health Care Reform: The Governor Is 'Against The Mandate'

WASHINGTON -- Indiana Governor Mitch Daniel's office is downplaying, if not fully disregarding, a 2003 story that claims he favored requiring all Americans to purchase health service as a means of achieving universal coverage.

"Governor Daniels is against a mandate," his spokesperson, Jane Jankowski, emailed the Huffington Post on Thursday afternoon."He favors giving every American a tax credit individually so they can purchase insurance that is right for them. He believes nearly all would use it, so coverage would be nearly universal."

Jankowski's comments come hours after the Huffington Post highlighted a clip from Daniels' 2004 gubernatorial run that stated he supported the same type of compulsory insurance that Republicans have deemed an unconstitutional component of President Obama's health care law.

The video provides yet another clear indication that a principle once popular in conservative circles -- the individual mandate -- has now become poisonous.

Daniels has pursued other, less noteworthy policies similar to Obama's approach to health care law, including a tax on cigarettes as a means of generating revenue for health care coverage elsewhere and the expansion of Medicaid to individuals well above the poverty level.

As for the broader components of reform, Jankowski sent over an excerpt from an interview Daniels gave to radio talk show host Michael Smerconish on Thursday:

Michael Smerconish: Governor, when I asked Governor Romney to differentiate between what he had done in Massachusetts to what President Obama is seeking to do nationally, he stressed with me that his was a state initiative. As the chief executive of Indiana, do you believe that establishing universal coverage is the role of either a state or federal government? Mitch Daniels: I don’t believe in mandates. There’s nothing wrong with trying to protect more people from being ruined by an adverse health effect. We took a very, very different approach here in Indiana, more or less health saving accounts for low income people. That objective is not bad but I don’t think as a matter of either good health care policy or, frankly, our constitutional liberties, that government at any level should be ordering Americans to buy a given product.

Comments

[mcmutter]

01:48 PM on 05/28/2011

How often does Mitch beat his wife ? ... He never did answer that question at his presidential press conference ....

[Helloise]

07:03 AM on 05/21/2011

Given that Daniels was Bush's budget guy and mandates have been a gOp idea for a long time (see the Heritage Foundation), he probably helped invent it. David Stockman needs to invite these guys over for a counseling session on appropriate, not timely regret.

[richjustdonothaveenough]

06:58 PM on 05/20/2011

My goodness! I know where I saw Mitch Daniels face before,

He was in the movie "Deliverance". He played the banjo.

Here is his pic 25 years ago when he was just a kid.

http://www.thesahara.info/movies//deliverance2_guitar.jpg

[richjustdonothaveenough]

07:00 PM on 05/20/2011

Copy and paste the whole url

[richjustdonothaveenough]

06:51 PM on 05/20/2011

Actually, I am against the mandate.

I am for single payer. No mandate required, like in Canada.

The freedom from worry that if your daughter breaks her leg, you will not find yourself financially ruined.

[BethS]

04:12 PM on 05/20/2011

Mitch signed law that will take $$$$ out of poor school districts - and "redistribute" amongst the "Other than inner city" districts. A form of institutionlized racism IMO.

[watchclock]

02:45 PM on 05/20/2011

Anything that is mandated(FORCED ON YOU) by a govt. is not good. Especially the healthcare law. Dictatorship,Hitler sound familiar?

[Lash LaRue]

02:56 PM on 05/20/2011

You don't have to buy a thing. Pay the excise tax for being a lazy slacker and impacting the cost of my HC insurance.

[BethS]

04:14 PM on 05/20/2011

Anything?

[7dr361]

02:14 PM on 05/20/2011

Danial budget man for Bush ran economy in the tank???????Emmmmm. not good for president.

[Athelstane]

03:37 PM on 05/20/2011

Daniels was budget director from 2001-2003, by the way. The economy was fine until 2007.

[Yikes11]

01:05 PM on 05/20/2011

Is writing ay 0h el sans the creative effort, offensive?

[Yikes11]

01:02 PM on 05/20/2011

Is now calling the Affordable HC Act- ObamaCare. This is a slight on the President. This, is how the cons refer to the act. What gives.

[Yikes11]

01:00 PM on 05/20/2011

I mean AOL

[Yikes11]

01:00 PM on 05/20/2011

I noticed as of late, that HP

[Excalibre]

12:59 PM on 05/20/2011

Are there any GOPers left who aren't advocates of the individual mandate?

[pooka47401]

12:56 PM on 05/20/2011

".....including a tax on cigarettes as a means of generating revenue for health care coverage elsewhere and the expansion of Medicaid to individuals well above the poverty level. "

I live in Indiana and used to work for the State of Indiana , 18yrs as a Medicaid Caseworker.
The HIP program , Healthy Indiana Program, that you speak of as expanding Medicaid, depends on Mitch's whim. He has repeatedly cut off accepting applications from those Adults that qualify.He takes the tax on cigarettes but does not use it for healthcare. Meanwhile he discontinued Hospital Care for the Indigent a program that covered a one time emergency hospital stay for those who were low income but not eligible for Medicaid.
He has place a $1000 cap on medications for the mentally ill who are on medicaid disability. Indiana is 49th out of the 50 states in ease of the disabled to be approved for Medicaid Disability.
Mitch just signed into law a bill capping Medicaid payments to Nursing Homes so that those middle class Elderly, who are currently in a Nursing Home and run out of money, will have to leave...where will they go?? And those Elderly who have to go into a Nursing Home but have no money, will have to hope that a bed comes open eventually. But what if it doesn't??
And he privatized medicaid for families, of course he is for people giving money to Insurance Companies!!

[Athelstane]

02:15 PM on 05/20/2011

So you used to work for Governor Bayh, who left us a subtantial deficet that was cleaned up by Daniels and turned into a surplus.

[7dr361]

12:56 PM on 05/20/2011

This Danial guy ran bush's financial in the dirt.....and he wants to be Pres. what a looser

[Athelstane]

02:32 PM on 05/20/2011

Did a great job in Indiana.

[Athelstane]

03:46 PM on 05/20/2011

Daniels was Director from 2001-2003. At the time he left the economy was in great shape.

[shirlyujest]

11:12 AM on 05/20/2011

These R's belong in a movie..."The Three Faces of Eve" comes to mind but I'd change it slightly to a male lead. And, I'd make it a musical. The personalities would be a tinman, a scarecrow and a lion and the theme song would be: "If I only had a heart, a brain, some courage..." Yep, that about says it all for every single one of them. Oh, IMHO, of course.

[JohnFromPhilly]

12:51 PM on 05/20/2011

Shirly...if you haven't noticed, finances are the issue. Foolish hearts, lame brains, and lack of courage, on both sides of the ball, are precisely what have created the mess. How anyone can take a side on this is mind-boogling.

[dcflush]

02:03 PM on 05/20/2011

John, if you haven't noticed, some can take sides because Republican policies are what drove us to this horrible mess we find ourselves in. Republicans were left with a surplus and a good economy and proceeded to derail the ecomony, lose 8 million jobs, rub up the debt and deficit and let our President with a 1.6 TRILLION projected deficit and horrible jobs figures.

We are still a ways to go, but President Obama has turned things around and we've had 13 or 14 months of net private sector jobs growth and the economy and corporations are growing. Yes, we need more jobs, but republicans block every bill designed to help jobs growth.

On top of all that it is Republicans that cry of how unconsitutional the mandate is while a LARGE porton of them spoke at length about how the mandate and exchanges were the way they would like to see health care reformed, but then decided they were opposed as soon as President Obama decided on that path.

We can take a side precisely because we see how reprehensible Republican behavior has been over the past ten years and how much worse that behavior has become over the past two years.

Republicans and those that vote Republican should feel deep and penetrating shame at what they have done to this country.