obamacare Mandate Insurance

When you mandate insurance, pretty much everybody gets insurance

Even before the mandate took effect in 2007, only 8% of Massachusetts residents went without insurance -- half the national figure today. The mandate, along with subsidies that make policies more affordable, has brought the Massachusetts uninsured rate down to 3%, the lowest in the country.

Now that firms with 11 or more workers are on the hook for insurance, small-business employees are less likely to go without. More low-income workers are covered. And the hard-to-persuade healthy 18-to-34 crowd has been brought into the fold: Only 6% of these "young invincibles" lack insurance today, according to the state's Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA), down from 18% pre-reform.

Some joined a parent's policy -- under Romneycare, as with Obamacare, you have that right until age 26. Others accepted workplace coverage they might have otherwise skipped, sometimes to everyone's benefit