White House Not Backing Down On Health Insurance Measure

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday said it had no plans to abandon the controversial individual mandate in the president’s signature health care law despite the challenges the provision faces in courts and its eroding support in Congress.In his daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs showed no enthusiasm for talk of swapping the mandate — which, once phased in, will require individuals to obtain health insurance or face fines — for separate, less onerous, language.

“I think if we thought there was a better way of doing it, we would have gone that way,” Gibbs said.

“The president supports it,” the press secretary said of the mandate. “We have gone to court to maintain it. And, as the president has said, we will work with those who want to see improvements in this law regardless of party. But we believe that individual responsibility is a foundation.”

Gibbs’ comments were a bit of unexpected defiance from a White House under siege over its sales job on health care reform. But they also underscore just how much the president — once a critic of the individual mandate — has come to see the provision as a linchpin to the legislation.

He’s not necessarily alone. In private, aides on the Hill say there is little chance that a Democratic-run Senate will consider a legislative alternative to the mandate, at least while the White House forcefully defends its constitutionality and import in various courts. Meanwhile, operatives off the Hill — especially those allied with the Obama White House — have taken up the task of defending the provision on intellectual grounds.

On Wednesday, the Center for American Progress is slated to release a report from MIT professor Jonathan Gruber — one of the brains behind the health care law — that will show that alternatives to the mandate “will not cover as many or save as much money as the Affordable Care Act.”

Source: Huffington Post