The Politics of the Individual Mandate

Within the health policy, political, and legal communities, the term "individual mandate" refers to a requirement on individuals to purchase healthcare insurance. This policy mechanism is meant to coerce healthy and young individuals who have the means to purchase coverage to do so, in an attempt to moderate premium prices and to avoid a phenomenon known as "death spiral" in the individual and small group health insurance market. Given the political, legal, and policy-based attention the individual mandate has received since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the supplemental Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, this thesis seeks to examine the historical, political, economic, and legal quandaries that are central to appreciating the components of this debate and understanding its eventual outcome.

Author

• Gooding, Mark John

Language

• en

Keyword

• Health Care Policy
• Individual Mandate
• Health Care Reform
• Politics

Date created

• 2012

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Graduate School of Political Management

Degree

• M.P.S.

Advisor

• Ettinger, David

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/4m90dv63t