While the mandating of insurance is similar, there are a number of difference between the two bills that is at the core a likely reason its okay then and not now. For example, one of the key ones it seems is the ability to purchase between state lines. This opens up competition in the market place making insurance more varied, more affordable, and gives more choices to those having to buy it. From what I've seen the penalties for buying your own insurance, and buying very good insurance for yourself, were not present in the older bill which again makes the choice more difficult.
The plan from 1993 also had a number of things, such a reform of malpractice law, that have been denied going into this.
It also doesn't seem to have a number of things, such as the direct access to our bank accounts, a government panel making decisions regarding what treatment you can have (without the appeals process found in private insurance), subsidizing union contracts, and other such things that add to this.
As I've stated, I very much dislike the notion of mandated insurance. I think its a constitutionally problematic thing that I believe violates the spirit more so than the letter of it. That said, as part of a compromised bill which stressed consumer responsibility and choice of private insurance with the government simply, at most, as a safety net...without a number of penalties and regulations that seem to have no real purpose other than to set the stage for continual legislation pushes towards more people choosing or needing the government plan and thus moving to single payer...could be a compromised type bill I could get behind if done honestly and above the board while in the minority...as the republicans were in 1993.
That is not the case, in any way here. Many of the core conservative ideas for fixing things have been utterly rejected. The only real compromise that's been presented is "We'll make it LESS liberal" in most cases. The various regulations, penalties, and fines on individuals, business, and the insurance companies appears to be a clear attempt to make it either difficult or inefficient to get the insurance you want, you want to provide as a business owner, or you need to provide to get a profit as an insurance provider. This, coupled with the mandate for individual insurance, I believe is going to simply set the stage for more problems, not less, to simply give a way to say "See, we should've done single payer in the first place, lets do it now".
I don't see those same things in the 1993 plan.