A simple alternative to the Obamacare mandate

IT JUST MAKES NO SENSE. The health reform law is trying to force $15-an-hour workers and their employers to buy more than a million dollars of coverage when they don’t have anything like a million dollars in assets to protect. Further, some of these families are being forced to give up “mini-med” plans that paid the first $2,000 or $3,000 of medical bills and enroll in plans with deductibles of $10,000 or more. Why do we need to force a family at this income level to pay the first $10,000 of medical costs? We don’t.

Health insurance is valuable for basically two reasons: to protect assets, including the benefits of future wage income, and to avoid free ridership. The public interest is obvious only in the second case.