Originally posted by mikemike That is not equivalent... you can avoid it by not owning a car. The health insurance mandate is unavoidable.
However, even if you don't own a car but are hit by one, you are better off if the driver has insurance.
The insurance mandate isn't the best part of the bill, unfortunately it's the one that could get passed across industry lobbying, Republicans, and the more conservative Democrats.
The basic concept of insurance is that you spread the cost across a very large population in order to pay for the few who need it. Our insurance business does a fair job at this - yet, if you allow the large population to = US population, and remove the profit overhead (and even with gov't inefficiency, surely the administrative overhead is less than the dozens of private companies all doing the same back office work - and paying several layers of bosses in the several companies big bucks)... surely the risk is spread out further and thus the overall cost is lower.
The issue then is how to argue with the medical industry: machinery makers, drug companies, doctors, over what is a reasonable price for each item. Somehow Siemens, pick a large Euro drug company, and European doctors manage to make a living.