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.
