If I’m not mistaken, I believe Newt is no longer in favor of any flavor of mandate. I think I heard him say that.
I won’t favor a mandate, period.
Better to incentivize people to make insurance more affordable and more competitive. In my book, if in the end someone is running up a large medical bill who could’ve afforded insurance and refused to get any, and refuses to pay up after the fact, the medical care facility should take them to the cleaners.
If any laws need strengthening to facilitate this, then fine.
It’s a government manufactured “crisis”. Same old story. Government intervenes in the marketplace, and screws things up. Declares a “crisis”, and swoops in.
It depends on how a mandate works. Every driver has to buy liability insurance, and drivers that don’t or that can’t (because of their driving record) go into a risk pool and have to post a bond.
The good thing about a mandate is that there has to be some provision for buying health insurance...I was not able to buy it privately (because I’m self-employed) for 25 years because I had had a melanoma removed when I was in my early 30s. I tried to get them to write me a policy with an exception, and they told me that testing for it would cost too much and therefore they wouldn’t insure.
Having people post a bond or go into a pool is not necessariily a bad idea and can help people, such as the self-employed, people with pre-existing conditions, etc., who normally can’t get insurance and then end up exhausting their personal savings (as happened to me once) or going on welfare and having the state pay for it.
What is a bad idea is having a sole provider (the government) and forcing people to either buy or contribute to that.