During the Clinton years, in 1993/94, the Republicans came up with the “individual mandate” for health insurance. They proposed it as the market-driven solution to the health care problem. After all, we’re requiring people to buy auto insurance before driving a car. So why don’t we require people to buy health insurance?

If people have no insurance and no money, and they have a serious illness or accident, requiring care, they will have no shame in going to an emergency room and asking us for care – and we all get to pay, whether we want to or not.

Twenty years later, Republicans revile the “individual mandate,” apparently because Obama adopted it, and now they cry, “leave us a shred of freedom!”

This is the most ridiculous argument about freedom I have ever heard. We’re not leaving the American people a shred of freedom by asking those that refuse to buy health insurance to buy some?

What about my freedom in allowing me not to contribute to pay for the health care of those that are not willing to buy their own insurance?

This has nothing to do with freedom.

It shows how politicians think we’re all idiots out here, unable to reason past their inane one-liners and soundbites.

And unfortunately, we probably are.

Bush and Cheney just kept telling us for years and years that Saddam was behind 9/11, until we eventually all kept drinking the Kool-Aid.