April 2012 | Joel C. Cantor | Opinion: The Embattled Individual Mandate
Anyone with even a passing interest in healthcare or politics knows that the so-called individual health insurance mandate has become a legal and partisan battleground of historic proportions. With origins in conservative policy strategies to address failures of private health insurance markets, the idea that everyone should be required to have health insurance has become a symbol of government intrusion in our daily lives. Derisively dubbed socialistic or worse, it is no wonder that this provision of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly called the ACA) has public approval ratings nearly as low as the U.S. Congress itself.