The Devil Mandate

Did you realize the Supreme Court was in session earlier this week? Might’ve been some arguments about health care? Of course there was, and of course the Supremes are considering striking down the whole law. This leads Matt O’Brien to argue that insurers saw the news and are cheered:

One reasonable conclusion is that Wall Street's betting that Obamacare will either be struck down in its entirety or upheld in its entirety. Both would be very, very good news for healthcare companies. The death of the individual mandate, alone, would be bad news for Big Insurance.

It’s correct that losing the mandate alone would be bad news for insurers—but I’m not sure the entire law being struck down is all that wonderful for insurance companies specifically and the health care industry more broadly. Obamacare has many elements that envision a much different health care industry than the one around today, but it’s not that hostile to the system. It really could go so much worse, and with continuing inflation in health care and pressure on public budgets, the risk of it becoming so much worse increases. That scenario has a lot of uncertainty. The devil you know can be so much more friendly than many of the devils you don’t.