Joe Biden Wants to Resurrect the Individual Mandate

Joe Biden Wants to Resurrect the Individual MandateReports CNBC:

Joe Biden, former vice president and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, said Friday he would bring back the individual mandate, the penalty for not having health insurance, which was a pillar of the Affordable Care Act.

“Yes, I’d bring back the individual mandate,” Biden said in an interview on CNN. The individual mandate would be popular now, “compared to what’s being offered,” he added.

This is a bizarre thing to be saying in 2019.

In designing Obamacare, the law’s authors had what was sometimes called a “three-legged stool” in mind. One, prohibit insurance companies from charging higher prices to people with preexisting conditions. Two, because this will tempt people to wait until after they get sick to buy insurance — a behavior that drives up premiums and can lead to the dreaded “death spiral,” where each premium hike causes more healthy people to leave the market, leading to another premium hike — simply require everyone to get covered. And three, to make sure everyone can buy insurance, offer subsidies to those who can’t afford it.