Health insurance mandate

Approximately 46 million Americans stay uninsured. This tendency has led to a national debate over how to expand the coverage. Many people advocate a goal reaching of “universal coverage”, meaning that every American would be obliged to have health insurance. There were also supporters of a single-payer system, which would make the government to administer the taxpayer-financed system. Others believed that the employer mandate would solve the problem, because it would require the employers to provide all their workers with the insurance. The two latter approach had evident disadvantages and there was no way they could have been accepted.

That’s why another approach to universal coverage is now becoming very popular, and it is called the individual mandate. It is a requirement for all legal Americans to obtain sufficient health insurance policy. Residents, who don’t receive coverage from their employees, would have to buy one individually. If the government enforces such mandate, then it would be an expansion of its power. Referring to a Congressional Budget Note of 1994, the government has never required any lawful resident of the US to buy any goods or services. However, the individual mandate has found its supporters among conservatives, which is very unusual considering their general political views. Some experts say that individual mandate will become a great step to universal coverage.

Other observers, including famous American economists think that individual mandates might become useful for another reason. As you know, when someone without a health insurance gets ill and requires treatment, he or she will receive medical treatment. Moreover, hospitals are required by law to provide care to those, who are not able to pay for the medical care. In comparison, physicians are not required to provide care if the person is not able to pay, although there are few, who would deny treatment to a patient, because he or she lacks health insurance plan. However, this kind of treatment is not free at all, even when the patient doesn’t pay for it. Who pays for it then? The cost of every treatment is shifted to others, Americans, who have insurance plans, and taxpayers. This means, that uninsured individuals are “free riding” compared to the rest of the citizens. Thus, if the health insurance became enforced by the law, then everyone would have at least some kind of coverage and the taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay as much for someone else.

To implement a health insurance mandate, government would have to somehow keep track of those, who are uninsured, and then punish them for not obeying the law. However, the history has shown that government didn’t reach great success in enforcing insurance mandates. For example, 47 states in the country have a law that requires the drivers to purchase automobile liability insurance, although about 14.5 percent of drivers still stay uninsured there. The discussions on this problem will go on for some more years, and then there should be a consensus worked out. To find more information on this topic, please register on our site.