The six Senate Republicans seeking a “bipartisan compromise” on President Obama’s proposal for a government-run health care system are flirting with a provision – an individual mandate to buy government-approved health insurance – that runs counter to everything the GOP stands for. This “gang of six” includes senators Olympia Snowe of Maine, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Robert Bennett of Utah, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Snowe has been covertly negotiating with Obama for weeks, while Grassley supports the concept of a health care insurance co-op. The other four are co-sponsors of S. 391, the Healthy Americans Act introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, which includes some attractive features but at its heart is an individual mandate. Individuals and fFamilies would be fined as much as $3,800 annually for not buying approved health insurance.

An individual mandate should be anathema to all GOPers for two reasons. First, the individual mandate is the fulcrum of cooperation between government-run health care advocates and the big health insurance companies that would profit immensely if it’s approved. As the Social Security Institute’s Larry Hunter trenchantly observed, the big insurers “desperately want an individual mandate passed and will accept anything short of having their CEOs pushed out of an airplane door to get it.” Such a “public-private partnership” will work no better for health care than it has in the mortgage industry with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.