Can this health care reform work without mandating health insurance?

[GOPBasher]

I'm genuinely asking here. It doesn't seem to me like it could work, but I hope I'm wrong and I want to hear other arguments. What I'm thinking is that, short of a single-payer or otherwise socialist system, this health care reform won't work without mandating insurance coverage.

You cannot tell insurance companies that they must cover people with pre-existing conditions if we don't bring everyone into the system to spread the risk. This way, people can remain uninsured until they have a problem, and then they can sign up for insurance. To cover this, insurance companies will have to raise the premiums tremendously on everyone who is covered.

Furthermore, what do we do with people who have no insurance and end up in the emergency room? They must be treated by law (which is good). But the hospital can't get any money from them, so to recoup the money they must raise their prices on everyone who is insured. This is one of the major reasons our health care costs have sky-rocketed so much in recent years.

Even if we had a public option, I don't see how that would work either, because people would still have to pay something to get it.

In short, I think we would either need a single-payer or fully socialist system (neither of which is not happening, unfortunately), OR we must have the insurance mandate. I'm no expert on any of this, however, and I want to hear what anyone else has to say.

[superduperfarleft]

1. No.

The "best" alternative would be a public option with mandates, but you still run the risk of future governments (or hell, even this one) underfunding it.

[DailyGrind51]

2. We have ICHIP in Illinois, but it was never adequately funded and the premiums are astronomical!

[SoCalDem]

3. Nope it's ALL about cost

and as long as "some people" are allowed to opt-out because they think that nothing bad will ever happen to them, or they just don't want to spend the money, the overall costs go through the roof..

This is why "insurance" should have NEVER been any part of the plan. It was time to tell the insurance companies that their free-ride was over, and everyone was going on Medicare.

Insurance companies should have been allowed to sell supplementals, but nothing more. By every working person paying more into Medicare instead of into the insurance companies' CEOs pockets, there would have been PLENTY of money to cover everyone quite well.

The right is hung up on the part where they get to determine worthiness, and the left is hung up on the fact that a National Health Care ID card would have to be a part of the plan, that they would never allow true health care to happen for us..

In about 10 years we Boomers will start dropping like flies, so the timing might work then to actually overhaul this beast.. Here's hoping.

The ironic part is that whites will be a minority soon, and the people who are used to carrying ID and used to showing it, will be the majority, so they may actually embrace this necessary part of national health care.:)