Why Insurance Mandates Don’t Work, Part 89,040,075 (And Counting)

Can, as Hillary Clinton argues, health insurance mandates cover the uninsured in America?  Doesn’t look like it. Meanwhile, seems that they simply exacerbate the funding problems they’re designed to cure.

A central premise of RomneyCare, the smorgasbord of health care reforms that Gov. Mitt Romney (R) wrought in Massachusetts, is that the government could cover the uninsured by redirecting money from uncompensated care subsidies to subsidies for insurance. Because hey, if we give that money to the uninsured, they won’t show up at the hospital unable to pay, right? We could achieve universal coverage with no new government subsidies!

Unless, of course, all the king’s mandates and all the king’s subsidies fail to achieve universal coverage. In that case, the uninsured will continue to show up at hospitals and receive uncompensated care.

And that means additional, unplanned costs, and greater difficulty paying for the treatment of the uninsured.