Mandates and Subsidies Need to Stay

If we value all Americans having access to health insurance, regardless of pre-existing conditions, then mandates and subsidies need to stay. The New York Times reports,

New York is a great case study. Before Obamacare, it had the pre-existing conditions policy, but without subsidies or a mandate. When the Obamacare rules kicked in, premiums there went down by 50 percent.

​Taking away those unpopular pieces of the law and keeping the popular pre-existing conditions piece might seem like a political win. But it would result in a broken system.
When Mitt Romney was devising the Massachusetts health reform law that would become the model for Obamacare, he hoped to set up a marketplace for health plans with some financial assistance for low-income people to buy insurance. What he didn’t want was a mandate.

Then Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. economist who had calculated the results, showed him the numbers: His plan would cover only a third of the uninsured and cost two-thirds as much as an identical plan with a mandate. Mr. Romney embraced the mandate.
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When Barack Obama ran for president in 2007, he, too, advocated a market-based health reform system. He, too, said he did not support a mandate. Then he became president, and economists brought him the numbers. By the time the Affordable Care Act passed, he had changed his mind.