I have yet to have a single, solitary person on this forum provide any actual evidence of the actual proposal that was given in 1993. I've seen bloggers speaking about it, typically referencing other bloggers. I've seen a 3rd party comparison chart that is exceedingly lacking in specifics and depth. However I've seen absolutely zero hard evidence of a plan to be able to look at it independently and actually compare, despite some people on this site claiming they're nearly "identical" yet never having seen it themselves.
In 1993 the Republicans were a minority group, likely suggesting a plan that would look bipartisan and compromising in nature rather than one that was the idea thing they'd want. However there has been no indication anywhere that I've seen of the penalties or enforcement that was in the 1993 plan, which alone could paint a very different picture.
As I've said before, one could say someone should like Golf if they like Football because that shows they like games with a ball in it. One could also say that would be an incredibly ignorant comment to make.
Without actual evidence and ability to look at the plan, to see the reasonings surrounding it almost 20 years ago, and the difference between now its hard to really make such a claim, unless you're one of the typically dishonest hyper partisan types, that its automatically hypocritical or partisan to say that almost 20 years ago people in a party supported a plan that had this one particular thing in it, the extent of which is completely unknown, but to be against this current plan.
I responded to you yesterday on this, but possibly you didn't see it.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...-someone-shot-my-office-9.html#post1058645088
The point is that there are Republican ideas and similarities (as noted in the article below) that could have been built upon. Instead they pretended like there was no part of it they agreed with. It had to be scrapped before they would even consider it. Remember, Republicans are the minority party and therefore any legislation would never be exactly what they would like to see. Those are the consequences of losing an election.
Here is the best I could do. I could not find his 1993 plan online.
Republicans Spurn Once-Favored Health Mandate | 89.3 KPCC
But Hatch's opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.
In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."
The 'Free-Rider Effect'
Pauly, a conservative health economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says it wasn't just his idea. Back in the late 1980s — when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a government-sponsored single-payer system — "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "
The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."
One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.
"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. "There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens."
Republican, Democratic Bills Strikingly Similar
So while President Clinton was pushing for employers to cover their workers in his 1993 bill, John Chafee of Rhode Island, along with 20 other GOP senators and Rep. Bill Thomas of California, introduced legislation that instead featured an individual mandate. Four of those Republican co-sponsors — Hatch, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Robert Bennett of Utah and Christopher Bond of Missouri — remain in the Senate today.
The GOP's 1993 measure included some features Republicans still want Democrats to consider, including damage award caps for medical malpractice lawsuits.
But the summary of the Republican bill from the Clinton era and the Democratic bills that passed the House and Senate over the past few months are startlingly alike.
Beyond the requirement that everyone have insurance, both call for purchasing pools and standardized insurance plans. Both call for a ban on insurers denying coverage or raising premiums because a person has been sick in the past. Both even call for increased federal research into the effectiveness of medical treatments — something else that used to have strong bipartisan support, but that Republicans have been backing away from recently.
'A Sad Testament'
Nichols, of the New America Foundation, says he's depressed that so many issues that used to be part of the Republican health agenda are now being rejected by Republican leaders and most of the rank and file. "I think it's a sad testament to the state of relations among the parties that they've gotten to this point," he said.
And how does economist Pauly feel about the GOP's retreat from the individual mandate they used to promote? "That's not something that makes me particularly happy," he says.