Since one of the most controversial elements of "Obamacare" is the individual mandate, I wanted to share T.R. Reid's take on this issue:
Everyone in Japan is required to sign up with a health insurance plan. This is what's known as an "individual mandate," a concept that has sparked furious debate in the United States. But every nation relies on health insurance has that requirement - it's necessary to ensure a viable risk pool for the insurance companies - and in Japan the mandate is not controversial at all. "It's considered an element of personal responsibility, that you insure yourself against health care costs . . . And who can be against personal responsibility?"
An individual mandate to buy insurance raises a corollary question: How do you enforce the mandate? That is an issue America's policy makers have debated time and time again, with no real resolution. Japan has come up with a fairly elegant solution to this common problem. If you don't have an insurance plan, you'll be assigned to one run by your local city government. If you don't pay the premium - about 1 percent of the population fails to pay - you'll get regular dunning letters from the insurance company. But if you get sick, you're required to pay back all the premiums you have missed (up to one year's worth) before the insurance company will pay your bill. The result is that the few people who refuse to pay health insurance premiums tend to make up their arrears when they have an accident or become seriously ill. For the unemployed or those too poor to pay their premiums, local government pays the insurance premium instead, so coverage never lapses.
I also have to include, at this point that Japan spends about 8% of its GDP on health care (more than half of the U.S. 17% of GDP) and the Japanese are the most "prodigious" consumers of health care in the world, visiting a doctor an average of 14.5 times each year, and receiving more CAT scans and MRIs, and taking more prescription drugs that anyone else in the world.
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