Liberals frustrated with the decision to drop a public option are now attacking a core principle of health care reform: the individual mandate. Greg Sargent and Ben Smith quote Jim Dean, brother of Howard, in an e-mail that just went out to Democracy for America:

Senate leaders are all over Washington claiming they finally have a healthcare reform bill they can pass, as long as they remove the public option. After all, they say that even without a public option, the bill still "covers" 30 million more Americans.

What they are actually talking about is something called the "individual mandate." That's a section of the law that requires every single American buy health insurance or break the law and face penalties and fines. So, the bill doesn't actually "cover" 30 million more Americans--instead it makes them criminals if they don't buy insurance from the same companies that got us into this mess.

Well, ok, I suppose that's true in a technical sense. But the people making (and listening) to this argument should know that it's equally true of several universal coverage systems abroad.

The Netherlands and Switzerland require their residents to purchase health insurance from private carriers. Residents who do not are subject to fines. Yet most knowledgeable followers of health care policy have only good things to say about the Dutch system and mostly (though not always) good things to say about the Swiss counterpart.