Learning To Love Broccoli
Rumored: SCOTUS will strike the ACA’s purchase mandate and is wrestling mightily with whether the mandate can be severed from guaranteed issue and community rating.
But wait: the argument on severing cuts both ways. If guaranteed issue and community rating are within Congressional power, but lead to disaster without the mandate, does the mandate doom guaranteed issue and community rating? Or do guaranteed issue and community rating make the mandate a necessary and proper means to avoid disaster?
Now imagine the ABA, the Affordable Broccoli Act: guaranteed issue broccoli; community pricing, each seller must sell at same price to all consumers; and a broccoli purchase mandate.
Now imagine the ABA, this time with no mandate. Can we keep the other broccoli market reforms without creating broccoli market death spirals, free-rider issues, or other market breakdowns? Yes, we can! Broccoli has always been available to people who decide only at the point of purchase whether to buy broccoli or not. And virtually every broccoli retailer has historically sold broccoli to his customers at a single market price.
So, Justice Kennedy, you were wondering what’s unique about health insurance?
