Joe Biden has come out in favor of bringing back Obamacare’s individual mandate, which doesn’t make sense from a political or policy standpoint.
The individual mandate was among the least popular and most contentious aspects of Obamacare. There was a reason why Barack Obama himself ran against the idea of the mandate in his 2008 primary. He embraced one once in office to mollify the Congressional Budget Office at a time when the requirement was broadly believed as necessary to ensure the stability of a market that would force insurers to offer coverage to those with preexisting conditions without charging more.
But since it went into effect in 2014 and was repealed in the 2017 tax law, we’ve had actual lived experience with and without the mandate, and it turns out to have been much less important than its proponents and opponents predicted, and than the Congressional Budget Office projected.
Biden has the chance to shape a different path on healthcare and has signaled he wants to support some sort of optional government plan or Medicare buy-in. So it’s unclear why he’d feel the need to bring back the unpopular mandate that, incidentally, disproportionately fell on the middle class.
It might be part of his instinct to tie himself to Obama at every opportunity, especially when it comes to presenting himself as the guardian of Obamacare.
As he put it in the Democratic debate: “I’m against any Democrat who opposes … and takes down Obamacare and any Republican who wants to get rid of Obamacare.”
