mandate penalty was stronger. i wish the federal government had done more to get states to expand their medicaid programs. what do you mean by you want the mandates stronger? what do you mean by that precisely? well, basically any insurance plan, the way insurance works is people pay in when they re healthy and benefit when they re sick. the only way to make that work is to make sure that everyone s in when they re healthy so the money is there when they get sick to pay out. if you have a system which does not insurance the health you re in, insurers will kick the sick out and not provide them insurance. there s no alternative to that but to have individual mandate to make sure the healthy any alternative which gets rid of the mandate cannot prevent the discrimination against the sick which is really popular among american citizens. senator cassidy, you want to respond? first, for all speaking about the wonderful things about obamacare, for eight years the american voter has
mandate penalty was stronger. i wish the federal government had done more to get states to expand their medicaid programs. what do you mean by you want the mandates stronger? what do you mean by that precisely? well, basically any insurance plan, the way insurance works is people pay in when they re healthy and benefit when they re sick. the only way to make that work is to make sure that everyone s in when they re healthy so the money is there when they get sick to pay out. if you have a system which does not insurance the health you re in, insurers will kick the sick out and not provide them insurance. there s no alternative to that but to have individual mandate to make sure the healthy any alternative which gets rid of the mandate cannot prevent the discrimination against the sick which is really popular among american citizens. senator cassidy, you want to respond? first, for all speaking about the wonderful things about obamacare, for eight years the american voter has b
no the law is working as designed. however, it could work better. probably the most important things experts would agree on is we need a larger mandate penalty. we have individuals who are essentially free-riding on the system, essentially waiting until they get sick and theb getting health insurance. the whole idea of this plan way was pioneered in massachusetts was that the individual mandate penalty would bring those people into the system and have them participate. the penalty right now is probably too low and that s something i think ideally we would fix. so somebody who is president could go to congress and say you know what, lawmakers, this is a fix, can you pass this, is that what would have to happen to put that fix into place? basically it s hard to know what dramatic fix we can do without congress participating in the process. we could do things like the stronger mandate is one. we could do things like increasing the pressure on states to expand their medicaid programs
than we thought. that s sort of the unpredictability of a new market. that will settle down over time and new insurors will enter. so hindsight is 20/20, right? looking back, is there one thing you wish was done differently? i think there s really probably two things i wish was done differently. one is i think i wish the mandate penalty was stronger. the other i wish the federal government had done more to get states to expand their medicaid programs. i think that this is a fundamental flaw in the system that s leaving citizens uncovered who are sick, who are coming into this exchange pool and making it more expensive. realistically, after the next president is put into office, what do you think will happen with obamacare? i think nothing much is going to happen, to be honest. i think basically it s a system that largely works, that the flaws you are seeing now or the premium increases you are seeing now are just the natural dynamics of a market as it
care exchange. because of that the administration tried to fix it, greta, like they do in many instances with a rule to the irs to disregard the decision of the states and issue this rule to set of subsidies issued in all 50 states in addition to the employer mandate penalty. i may oversimplify it. as i understand looking at the statute, if the supreme court looks plainly at the just the words, strict construction, then what will happen is that there will be about 37 states where people won t be able to get subsidies and essentially that the program will go belly up for about seven people. instead the supreme court takes the broader view and looks at the intent and the obama administration s intent was to make subsidies available to everybody then you lose. well, it s not just about the subsidies though. it is about the package lawsuit no exchanges no subsidies. no penalties assessed to employees; hobby lobby state last year in our state national case that company