ABC News' Teddy Davis reports:
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is once again weighing in on the health reform debate, this time echoing the insurance industry's argument that the individual mandate contained in the Senate Finance bill will prove unworkable as young and healthy Americans conclude that they are better off paying a small fine than purchasing costly insurance.
“Even factoring in government subsidies, the cost of purchasing a plan is much more than $750,” Palin writes in her latest Facebook message. “The result: many people, especially the young and healthy, will simply not buy coverage, choosing to pay the fine instead.
“They'll wait until they're sick to buy health insurance,” she adds, “confident in the knowledge that insurance companies can't deny them coverage, such a scenario is a perfect storm for increasing the cost of health care and creating an unsustainable mandate program.”
The former Republican vice presidential candidate, whose book, “Going Rogue,” is set to be released on Nov. 17, is keeping people guessing about her political future. Some top Republicans expect her to become a candidate for president in 2012. Others, including some top Republicans with ties to her, think that she wants to be influential on issues of concern to her without undergoing the rigor of a White House run.
Palin's critique of the weakened individual mandate echoes concerns about the Finance bill that were raised last week by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the lobbying arm of the health insurance industry.
After spending months at the table with the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers pushing for a strong individual mandate, AHIP turned against the Senate Finance bill last week just two days before the measure came to a vote. AHIP's campaign against the Finance bill has thus far included a widely criticized report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers warning about higher premium costs and a television ad blitz warning seniors about proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage.
Even though the Finance Committee approved an amendment reducing the individual mandate penalty, the Congressional Budget Office did not change its estimate that the percentage of legal nonelderly U.S. residents with insurance coverage would rise from the current 83 percent to 94 percent over the next decade.
In addition to targeting the “unsustainable” individual mandate penalty, Palin uses her Facebook post to try to drive a wedge between President Obama and some traditional Democratic allies by criticizing the Finance bill for proposing to tax the “so-called 'Cadillac' health care plans enjoyed by many union members.” The union-funded Health Care for America for Now group launched an ad on Thursday blasting the proposed tax on high-cost insurance plans.
When it comes to the process being used to develop health-care policy, Palin criticizes Obama for not sticking by his sweeping campaign promise to broadcast health-care negotiations on C-SPAN.
Obama brought cameras into the White House at the beginning of the reform effort for a made-for-TV event, but the most consequential negotiations have taken place behind closed doors as they have in previous administrations.
Palin is also pushing Obama to live by a promise on his campaign web site not to sign “any nonemergency bill” without giving the American public “an opportunity to review and comment on the White House web site for five days.”
She concludes her post by reiterating her free-market prescription for health reform.
Palin does not support an individual mandate requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. Instead, she favors (1) allowing individuals to purchase slimmed down, mandate-free health insurance policies across state lines; (2) giving individuals who purchase their own health care the same tax benefits as those who receive coverage from their employer; and (3) converting Medicare from an open-ended entitlement into a voucher system that provides seniors with a fixed sum of money to purchase private health insurance.
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