People complain about the you-must-buy-insurance provisions of the of the proposed health insurance reform, but there’s no way around it. The vast majority of

People complain about the you-must-buy-insurance provisions of the of the proposed health insurance reform, but there’s no way around it. The vast majority of Americans seem to agree that it’s morally obnoxious to charge people higher premiums just because they have a pre-existing health condition that makes them more likely to require care. So, under the proposal, insurers are restrained from doing that. Under that kind of pricing system, healthy people have an incentive to put off buying insurance until right before they really need it, and if everyone does that, then the premiums for folks who have no choice will really go through the roof. So there’s the requirement for everyone to buy insurance. If the premiums are oppressively high, then people at the lower (and even the lower-middle) end of the income scale will still have an incentive to just go without insurance and pay the penalty for non-compliance. So there are subsidies to make it easier for households in those income brackets to buy insurance.