Austin Frakt: The Individual Mandate Is the Last Line of Defense Before Single Payer

AF:

The simplest (political, not legal) defense of the mandate: If one wants to address the problems in health insurance markets and/or to get providers to accept payment reforms, the mandate–or something like it–is the political price. Yes, it’s about money. What else? Put it this way, if one wants to retain a private market-based health insurance system (which ours largely is), it takes a mandate. Reject the mandate without replacement with a similar mechanism and the whole thing unravels, not just as a matter of health economics (adverse selection) but as a matter of politics. If the private solutions fail, what’s left? It’s rather obvious, isn’t it? Yet this seems not to be widely appreciated.