Huffington Post:
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has a message for all the attorneys general and Republican lawmakers who are threatening lawsuits and claiming that an individual mandate for insurance coverage is unconstitutional: You don't have to abide by it -- just set up your own plan.
The Oregon Democrat isn't inviting opponents to defy the newly-enacted health care law. Instead, he's pointing out a provision in the bill that makes moot the argument over the legality of the individual mandate.
Speaking to the Huffington Post on Tuesday, Wyden discussed -- for one of the first times in public -- legislative language he authored which "allows a state to go out and do its own bill, including having no individual mandate."
It's called the "Empowering States to be Innovative" amendment. And it would, quite literally, give states the right to set up their own health care system -- with or without an individual mandate or, for that matter, with or without a public option -- provided that, as Wyden puts it, "they can meet the coverage requirements of the bill."
"Why don't you use the waiver provision to let you go set up your own plan?" the senator asked those who threaten health-care-related lawsuits. "Why would you just say you are going to sue everybody, when this bill gives you the authority and the legal counsel is on record as saying you can do it without an individual mandate?"
And what is Obama's response? From TPM:
In a speech today in Iowa, President Obama dared Republicans to make good on their threat to run on repealing health care reform.
"Now that we passed it, they're already promising to repeal it. They're actually going to run on a platform of repeal this November," Obama said. "And my attitude is, 'Go for it.'"
"If they wanna have that fight, we can have it," he went on. "Because I don't believe the American people are gonna put the insurance industry back in the driver's seat. We've already been there, we're not going back. This country's moving forward."
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