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The Individual Mandate: Implications for Public Health Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Wendy E. Parmet
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Extract

No provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has proven to be more contentious than the so-called “individual mandate.” Starting in 2014, the mandate will impose a penalty on non-exempt individuals who lack health insurance. According to Congress, the mandate is essential to ensuring near universal coverage. Without it, PPACA’s insurance reforms will lead healthy individuals to delay purchasing health insurance until they require medical care, resulting in risk pools with a disproportionate share of high-risk people. The price of insurance will then climb, causing more and more not-so-sick people to forego health insurance. The resulting “death spiral” will make insurance unaffordable to many more Americans.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , Fall 2011 , pp. 401 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2011

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