Is the mandate penalty large enough?

Austin Frakt

January 17, 2013

Earlier this week, David Nather of POLITICO reported that health insurers are telling the Obama Administration that the penalty for not having coverage will not be sufficiently large to encourage enough healthy people to sign up. However, if the goal is to avoid a destabilizing level of adverse selection, the best evidence we have is that it may be, when fully phased in, just fine. My latest post on the JAMA Forum goes over some of that evidence.

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Austin Frakt

Austin Frakt, PhD, is co-Editor-in-Chief of The Incidental Economist. His day job is Associate Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the Boston VA Healthcare System, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is also a Principal Research Scientist with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Health Services Research.

Is the mandate penalty large enough?

Austin Frakt

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Austin Frakt

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