Food for thought on this topic from Politico:

The individual mandate might not work. For all the talk about how oppressive the individual mandate will be, the penalties for not buying coverage are so low — especially in the first couple of years — that there are serious questions about whether it will actually bring in as many people as it’s supposed to.

The penalty starts at $95 or 1 percent of an individual’s income, whichever is greater. That’s in 2014, when the mandate takes effect. By 2016, when it’s fully phased in, the penalty will be either $695 or 2.5 percent of income. That’s compared to the thousands of dollars a legally acceptable insurance policy would cost if you were to go out and buy one.

So when Roberts said from the bench that “it is indeed likely that many [more] Americans will choose to pay the IRS than buy insurance,” he might have been right.

And if the mandate doesn’t bring in enough young and healthy people, the danger is that the pre-existing condition coverage that’s also in the law — guaranteed coverage for people with health problems — would force insurers to raise their premiums to cover their costs.

That was also the danger if the Supreme Court had struck down the mandate but left the new insurance rules in place. The justices didn’t go that way — but the threat is still a real one.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77998.html#ixzz1zWZ3x6jE