amusedEzra Klein: That brings up two issues. The first is the individual mandate, which begins this year but is a much bigger penalty in year two, and then even bigger in year three. So one question here is how well that works.
RL: I have an interesting answer for that. I think the mandate is almost worthless because the word is getting around that they can’t really collect it. And by year three, it’s really a lot of money. I think there’ll be real pressure to just get rid of it. I don’t think you can force people to buy this insurance. If they don’t want it there’ll be a political groundswell to get rid of it. So in my mind the individual mandate is kind of irrelevant to this.
Камент читателя XCoastie: Wouldn't it have been nice to have had this kind of inquiry by the press and this depth of analysis by experts BEFORE the law was passed? It seems like a lot of what Mr. Laszewski is saying was emminently predictable.