In her latest Washington Post column, Ruth Marcus rests her case for the individual mandate on the claim that care for the uninsured raises insurance premiums by “more than $1,000 a year.” As I note here, that’s at least four times too big — according to estimates made by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Congressional Budget Office (under Democratic control). As I also note at that link, there are less intrusive ways of getting that number down still more — and the mandate and its accompanying regulations are likely to raise premiums rather than shrink them.