Obama 2008: you could no more solve issue of uninsured with individual mandate than homelessness by ordering people to buy a home

Supreme irony? Top court poised to throw out Obamacare in echo of case Obama made against Hillary Clinton

It is a tad unfortunate that just days after the White House embraced the term "Obamacare" - previously regarded on the Left as a pejorative label - a majority of the nine Supreme Court justices have given strong indications they will rule it unconstitutional.

Even more ironic is that the justices, or five of them at least, look like they might force President Barack Obama back to the drawing board partly on the basis of the argument one Senator Obama made against then Senator Hillary Clinton in 2008.

At issue today was the so-called 'individual mandate" - the federal government's act of compelling Americans to buy health insurance. It is the centrepiece of the Affordable Health Care Act - aka Obamacare - which is the signature achievement of Obama's presidency thus far.

But back during the 2008 campaign, Obama argued strenuously against the individual mandate. In a debate in South Carolina, he said: "A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. ... But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can't afford it. And that's why my plan emphasises lowering costs."

In February 2008, he said that you could no more solve the issue of the uninsured with an individual mandate than you could cure homelessness by ordering people to buy a home:

This was one of the policies that allowed him to differentiate himself from Clinton and John Edwards, the serial sleazeball who (believe it or not given what we now know he was up to) had a pretty good shot at winning the Democratic nomination.

Obama felt so strongly about the issue that he even cut an ad attacking Clinton for her support of the individual mandate. "Hillary Clinton's attacking, but what's she not telling you about her health care plan?" the April 2008 ad asked. "It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can't afford it, and you pay a penalty if you don't."