Here are the estimates from five different sources about the impact of losing the mandate:
Thanls for the chart. In the spirit of full disclosure, the source of this compilation, AHIP ("America's Health Insurance Plans") is a trade group of insurers who lobbied very hard for passage of the law and whose members obviously have much to gain from a law that forces Americans to buy products from their member companies. Obviously, they aren't a disinterested party. That's not to say that the information is incorrect.
An interesting metric that the above graphic missed: How does the mandate affect the federal budget deficit? Well, the
CBO estimated that eliminating the mandate but keeping the rest of the ACA (subsidies, Medicaid expansion--everything) will reduce the federal budget deficit by $252 billion from 2011 to 2020.
If the ACA is retained without the mandate, CBO estimates that by 2019 39 million people won't buy health insurance. Today, approximately 50 million people don't have health insurance, so the number of uninsured is substantially reduced compared to the present situation. Moreover, every one of those people who chooses not to have insurance will have had the opportunity to buy a policy offered without need for underwriting, etc. The poor and not-so-poor will have Medicaid and generous subsidies available to help them buy policies. Every one of those uninsured will have chosen to "roll the dice" despite plenty of available options, unlike the situation today.
The SCOTUS begins their hearings Monday, but it will be months before they rule on the issue. Plenty of time to ruminate between now and then. All the guesses in the press about how the judges will see this (based on sketchy comments they have made, opinions they wrote sometimes many years ago, etc) harkens back to the days of the Kremlinologists who used to try to discern how the Soviet Politburo would rule and which party members would get promoted using similar small scraps of information.
