During his appearance on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Mitt Romney unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly (who knows?) made the case for the individual mandate.
ROMNEY: People with pre-existing conditions, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance.
LENO: Suppose they haven’t been insured before?
ROMNEY: Well, if they are 45 years old and they show up and say I want insurance because I have heart disease, it’s like, ‘Hey guys. We can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you are well and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered. [...]
We’ll look at a circumstance where someone is ill and hasn’t been insured so far, but people who have the chance to be insured –- if you are working in the auto business for instance, the companies carry insurance, they insure their employees, you look at the circumstances that exist –- but people who have done their best to get insured are going to be able to be covered. But you don’t want everyone saying, ‘I am going to sit back until I get sick and then go buy insurance.’ That doesn’t make sense. But you get defined rules and get people in who are playing by the rules.
Right. It doesn't make sense.
People waiting until they get sick to obtain health insurance is a great reason to pass an individual mandate. With a mandate, whether or not the person in question is already covered is no longer a mystery.
That must be why Governor Romney of Massachusetts passed a --gasp-- individual mandate! Eureka!