The Individual Mandate: Even Hypocrites Are Sometimes Right

The news is all full of supporters of the Affordable Care Act warning about how the health insurance system will collapse if, as various Republican repeal programs propose, the "individual mandate" is immediately gutted while parts of the ACA briefly solider on. It's not that the people issuing the warning aren't correct. Repeal of the individual mandate without some immediate replacement will clearly reduce the stability of whatever markets would otherwise remain as the ACA continues its death march. It's just that many of them are hypocrites.