We can compel military service (the draft), but we can't compel health insurance?

[jeff47]

10. Because the mandate becomes necessary when you remove pre-existing conditions

With no pre-existing conditions, there's no reason to buy insurance until you are sick. Wait until you need it, then buy it. Now that you're covered, get medical care. Once you're healthy again, you cancel the insurance.

As a result, there's no cost-sharing, so the entire system breaks down and only the 1% can afford medical care.

Pre-existing conditions prevented this and so healthy people bought insurance. But those are being removed.

So something has to get healthy people to buy insurance for cost sharing to work. That's either a mandate, a tax, or some incentive system that's going to severely screw some people.

I'd rather a tax and do Medicare for all, but Tea Partiers mean we can't do that directly. So we'll do it through the Rube Goldberg contraption that is the ACA.