The Patriot Post® · Carly Fiorina's ObamaCare Problem

The values behind Carly Fiorina’s solutions to ObamaCare are troubling, especially since she voiced support for a health insurance mandate in 2013. During an appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” Fiorina said she supported a type of individual mandate requiring people to get health insurance. The differences between what ObamaCare did and what Fiorina proposed came down to nuance: How much insurance an American was required to purchase. “I think ObamaCare remains an abomination, and let me tell you why,” Fiorina said then. “First of all, I think no one should be denied health care because of pre-existing conditions. And I think there are many more efficient ways we could have dealt with this other than ObamaCare.” In other words, she believes government still has the right to require insurance, to tell people what to buy. Fiorina’s quibble was that ObamaCare required too much.

Yesterday, Fiorina released a statement clarifying her past statements, explaining that she no longer held that policy position. “Since then, conservative health care experts have come up with significantly better alternatives to ObamaCare, including Representative Price’s and Governor Walker’s, just to name a couple,” she wrote. “To be clear, I believe that we must find a way to cover people with pre-existing conditions — but I do not believe we need a mandate of any kind to do that.” With ObamaCare being the law of the land, with court cases supporting its existence at every quarter, what difference, at this point, does it make? Perhaps it’s nothing — a bad policy position corrected, so let’s move on. But it could also be a troubling sign that Fiorina isn’t as quick to defend Liberty against government intrusion as we’d like to think.