Mrs. Clinton would mandate that everyone obtain coverage.
And mandating that everyone obtain coverage or pay a fine is entirely reasonable and necessary.
The experience in Massachusetts, which has enacted universal coverage with a mandate that everyone obtain health insurance, shows how difficult it is to force everyone to comply.
Both bills would broaden eligibility, and their requirement that everyone obtain insurance should also push more currently eligible people to sign up.
The crucial issue is whether a requirement that almost everyone obtain health insurance in 2014 or pay a penalty can be imposed by Congress under the powers granted to it by the Constitution, especially the power to regulate interstate commerce.
More than a score of Republican attorneys general and governors have filed suit to nullify two important requirements of the new law — that everyone obtain insurance or pay a penalty, and that states expand their Medicaid programs.
And there is a chance that parents, even with new subsidies, will find coverage unaffordable and choose not to buy it for themselves or their children, despite a new mandate in both bills that nearly everyone obtain coverage.
Ideas such as the requirement that everyone obtain insurance, with subsidies for people who can't afford it; the mandate that insurance companies offer coverage to all comers; and the incentives for states to expand the number of people covered by Medicaid have meant political war.
A lot will depend on whether future presidents and Congresses stick to the savings and deficit targets set in this legislation; on how aggressively states administer the new exchanges; on how health care professionals and institutions respond to the challenge of changing their ways; and on how the public responds to the mandate that everyone obtain insurance or pay a penalty.
The lawsuit, filed by state attorneys general and governors, all but one a Republican, seeks to overturn two central elements of the law: a mandate that virtually everyone obtain insurance or pay a penalty; and a big expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program that covers the poorest Americans.
Utah created a health insurance exchange for small businesses in 2007 and Herbert doesn't want to extend its reach to other aspects of Obamacare, including its Medicaid expansion, tax credits for private health insurance or individual mandate that nearly everyone obtain health insurance coverage.
