Health care: the individual mandate

We are already legally required to have car inssurance. Requiring health inssurance would be just another requirement, my only concern is the affordability of it. Health insurrance premiums are paid throughtout the year and we cannot afford to wait for a tax return each spring inorder to buy health insurrance.

sounds like a win for insurance companies and a bust for the rest of us! it is
unconstitutional? really, and it is in fact a tax in disguise! the mandatory auto
insurance 'directive' has not brought down auto repair costs and has not done much for auto insurance rates either! how can this be our best? it's sad.

Insurance should be mandated that covers the care hospitals and doctors are mandated to provide to patients.

There must be a mandate for everyone!! I was exactly like the young person who is "very healthy" and therefore does not want to have to pay. I did not need or even go to a doctor from 21 to 37 years old!!

Now I am 52, at 45, I got mugged; not my fault BUT it happened. Now I need more medical care and age as well, plays into this. Anyone who is young and does not want to pay, needs to think of their own parents and of themselves as their parents.

But an individual mandate will ONLY work with a public option so that Capitalists cannot squeeze people into being criminals, which WILL happen without both these components!

No one should be forced to buy expensive health insurance.
Taxes should be used to pay for each and every person to get free health care.

1) Obama has likened being forced to buy health insurance to being forced to buy auto insurance. The reason to buy auto insurance is to take care of someone ELSE if you run into them with your car. With health insurance you are only responsible for yourself.

2) Experts say that forcing people to buy insurance will make every citizen poorer and the health insurance industry much
much richer.
(I just heard your ucla person say the penalty for not buying ins. Is $750 a year and 'they might as well buy insurance for that. She is wY way out of touch with actual costs and projectedpenalties.)

The comparison to car insurance is flawed for two reasons.

1) One can choose not to drive a car, and therefore he or she need not have car insurance. However, one can not readily opt out of living.

2) Car insurance, like all other forms of insurance, is used in cases of unforeseen catastrophe. Health insurance is too often used in cases of maintenance. That would be like using car insurance to pay for oil changes and new spark plugs.

The mandate does what the British single payer system does, but with many more drawbacks. This is so complicated and unenforceable. In the UK, everyone pays for health insurance out of their pay check, there is no choice. This means that young healthy people have insurance who might be tempted to pay a fine here. So I would say the mandate is like the single payer system, with may drawbacks that the single payer system does not have. Too bad Americans are phobic about the notion of a single payer system.

This mandate is just another way for insurance companies to legally pick our pockets. This is an outrage!

Mandating is what the insurance companies want and it will only work if there is single payer or public option.
I've been self-employed for decades and my taxes have paid for health insurance for all government and military employess, people over 65, children on Schip...and I can't afford insurance or visits to a doctor for myself and I'm so tired of talk about how we can't afford...insuring all.
I can't afford to insure others but not myself and that's the status quo.

i must say that this proposed mandate is a seriously flawed concept letting the politicians 'have it both ways', again! and who loses? the average citizens lose,
the insurance companies really get rich. what real benefits does the average
citizen get from this? i think we have been brainwashed by the COMPANY, again.

How about mandate for the poeple and profit cap for insurance companies

The problem with those who do not want to pay is that they are assuming they will not get seriously sick, get hit by an uninsured driver, have a significant accident, get hurt by someone else, etc.

What will these do if they have determined THEY DO NOT NEED INSURANCE, when THEY REALLY NEED IT ALL OF A SUDDEN??

This shortsighted perspective by many is why either we liv6e the status quo or everyone pays so that there are no more uninsured Americans going to emergency rooms.

Dear Larry: is your guest saying that you either must buy health insurance or pay a 750 dollar tax and still get it? full health coverage for 750.00 a year?

What about people in non-benefit paying jobs, such as artists, actors, waiters, service workers, etc. who do not qualify for individual insurance plans. I have an actress friend who cannot get an individual health plan because she had childhood Leukemia, and another friend who is above the weight limit for an individual health plan. Neither of them have employer offered health insurance as an option. Do they have to change careers, or face being penalized in an amount that is higher than an annual health club membership?

The comparison to paying taxes is silly.

Taxes are paid to the government (society). We are talking about mandating payments to PRIVATE for profit companies. This is for the benefit of a privileged class, stockholders

Furthermore, mandating this for being born borders on an "oppresive power exerted by government". This happens to be the definition of Tyranny by the way

so we should give more money to companies like AIG? no! stop the madness!

There is no true mandate, we all have the option to opt out by simply moving out of the country! This arguement is shortsighted!!!

We cannot mandate health insurance until we regulatei the cost of insurace rates. I can remember when I was young didn't have auto insurance becuase of the cost. Then California then mandated that everybody have it. I got it, but it was at a FAR higher rate. I thought that was odd, since the reason stated was that we needed to make the streets of California safer. One would think that they would have wanted to make it affordable tto get more people into the program. As it is some 25% of people in the L.A. area still don't have auto insurance. What makes us think it will be any better with mandated health insurance?

we need healthCARE reform. why are we even devoting time to the unnecessary layer of healthINS?? I agree with everyone else -- a horrifying excuse to let the ins companies grab even more $$$ to give to their execs

This whole argument about having mandated insurance is misdirected. I agree with so many others who have commented here that the mandated insurance issue is NOT going to really bring down healthcare costs that much. It only enriches the insurance companies. We need to attack the real problem with rising healthcare costs by dealing with the specialist doctors fees, hospitals , and the drug and medical device companies. We also need to stop paying for people like Nadia Suleman who has too many kids and costs us all millions of dollars for her poor choices. If we must have an insurance system it should be made public and get rid of the private health insurance companies. The argument being made they operate more effectively for the consumer than any government plan is so bogus.

Insurance companies have lobbied to keep single payer off the table, all to now make THEM the single source of health care that will funnel an unnecessary 1/3 of our health care costs going to line their own pockets.

Among other problems this is one that will have to be solved in my opinion. When unemployed ever penny counts. If you are required to pay an insurance premium and then you have to pay a co pay plus or deductable how could that possibly help those folks?

I am a physician serving a low income population. Health insurance should be non-profit.Insurance companies will find way to deny service just to stay profitable.Here are the problems I witness: 1). poor people with public insurance who can't afford to pay $10 for tylenol but can afford iphone and a $70 dress for their kids.2)Mandate insurance is reasonable but everyone should pay,even the poor,even if it's just $5 per month.3)we should not raise premium on the healthy ones who hardly visit the doctor.In our clinic, it's the people who get free government insurance that come in for every little things,demand test,don't respect the medical equipments given to them free of charge, and don't practice preventive care since they don't have to pay for the insurance.4)The people who paid for their own insurance and have copays are the ones that refuse to come in to see the doctor even when we recommend them to.
IF HEALTH INSURANCE IS FREE, PEOPLE WILL UNDER VALUE THEIR HEALTH.

Larry just flatly disparaged the hypothetical person's protest that they 'can't afford insurance'. He said, 'that's just completely unbelievable!'
This is what I mean by Larry Mantle's lacking empathy. He also disparaged people whose homes were being foreclosed on, blaming them for having purposely bought houses they couldn't afford. That was months ago; recently we have seen a spate of articles come out describing studies which show it was and is the loan company's fault in most cases and that there was a pattern, an accepted pattern, of targeting poorer commumities to the point of fraud.
I wonder if Larry has even noted this new data or is still clinging to his belief in the rightness of blaming victims.

As to the mandated buying of health insurance, I have medicare and supplemental insurance now and I can afford it -- although there is a hefty co-pay and I could probably not afford it if I had major health care needs. But when I was a young single mother I simply would not have been able to afford it -- I couldn't even afford safe enough child care for my child, to our everlasting regret. I would not buy health care if it was 'mandated'. And I would not pay a fine. The government has no right to force large, unaffordable expenses on people when as a whole it makes no sense. So many economists predict massive housing foreclosures (even more!) and bankruptcies if people are forced to buy health insurance, which in any case is predictably inadequate for the case -- and billions more for the so-called health industry.

It fits with Mantle's unempathetic --for real people -- stance that he ignored my comment above suggesting a single-payer system, free health care for all, with taxes (which come mostly from the people making hundreds of thousands or millions a year and not equally from poor or middle class struggling people). And the comments he takes on the phone and many of the ones on here reflect it seems how many people of good sense, justice and caring have stopped listening to this program. Statistics recently consistently show that around 70% of people want a single payer system or at least the choice of chesp, government-paid-for health care(medicare-for-all); yet Mantle completely disregarded this need by most Americans; it wasn't even mentioned.

Being insured and under physician care will not make you healthy or keep you healthy. The current medical model is not geared to that. It is about covering up symptoms and giveng you drugs that, rarely address the cause of the problem and, for the most part, screw up your biochemistry and physiology more and more, thereby creating more disease.
Insurance at affordable rates should be available to anyone who wants it. However, for those of us who have never been served effectively by what Western medicine can offer, the mandate is a destructive burden.
I take care of my health using techniques I have paid to learn and providers like chiropractors, accupuncturists, and certain skilled nonlicensed practitioners. I eat according to my needs and avoid toxic exposures as well as is possible in our very toxic world. None of this is cheap, but I hate being miserable and this is what it takes for me.
I carry extra medical coverage on my car insurance, because an accident is the most likely cause of my needing Western medicine. Otherwise, I can pay out of pocket if I say, fall and break a leg.
There is a large subculture of individuals like me, who are not served by Western medicine and are paying out of pocket to get some real help. We are being responsible and trying to avoid burdening society and some of us are doing a pretty darned good job of it.
Too bad our medical system and insurance system cannot be reformed to serve us all, but the financial stranglehold on all of it from the drug industry will never allow it. Personal freedom to choose how to fill our individual needs is the only other alternative. Being required to participate in a corrupt and poorly functioning system through mandated insurance purchasing is abhorrent to me and really violates my rights to life, liberty and the pusuit of happiness. I will resist as long as possible. (And be healthier than 99% of you to boot.)

Now I've read the above comments I want to thank those who wrote about needing a single-payer system and say to Kathleen, above : Exactly right! I could have written almost every word you said...

I, like many others, am an extremely fit, healthy person, who exercises everyday(using knowledge gained from two Master's degrees in Sports Medicine), eats only organic, unprocessed food, consisting mainly of fruits & vegetables. I've had Health Ins. for only 7 of the last 15 yrs., and have ONLY used it for non-emergency Dental visits.
I am an Actor, and because of the sporadic nature of employment in the business, I've been uninsured for the last 3 yrs. I generally don't need health ins., and I certainly CANNOT afford to be forced to pay a fine or for coverage that I most likely won't use.
I propose that no citizen be forced to pay if they don't use the Health Care system, but if and when they DO use the system, they be charged for THAT service PLUS a retroactive penalty or "fine" (or whatever that year's minimum coverage fee was).
I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes for a health care system that allowed it's citizens full, free use it's services, including Prevention (such as health club memberships), Management (hospital or emergency coverage), Prescriptions, or Rehabilitation. Other Advanced countries already do this, why can't we?
It just seems silly that they're/we're willing to take money away from people that could/would normally be spent on health maintenance, and give it to Insurance companies. I could even understand if they were, instead, making it mandatory to join a Health Club, or buy vouchers that could only be used for healthier food options, such as fruits, veg's, and lean meats. We (as a country) need to put much more focus on Health MAINTENANCE, not just treatment after the fact.