The Health Insurance Mandate

Other things the government "forces" you to buy:
Mortgages, water heaters, hybrid cars ... In all cases, all other things equal, you will pay more tax if you don't buy one of these. The same thing occurs if you don't buy health insurance. Questioning the constitutionality of something that is effectively the same as raising taxes and offering a tax credit for health insurance is ridiculous.

There are many things to dislike about this bill, the mandate is NOT one of them. Keeping the mandate and pre-existing condition portions of the bill does not make Republican favored reforms impossible (never mind that Republicans used to favor the mandate see here, here, and here.).

Within the confines of the general bill, Republicans can still push to lower the Cadillac tax threshold (all the way to 0 is my preference), move more people from employer sponsored health insurance to the exchanges - especially from small businesses, and allow and promote high deductible health plans. The Republicans' gamble on a Democrat failure and refusal to negotiate has left us with a bill to the left of where it could have been, but it's not too late to fix it.