In his latest Bloomberg View column, Ramesh makes the case against the individual mandate. Part of his argument rests on a political economy thesis I’m inclined to buy:

If the government requires everyone to purchase insurance, it has to define what form of insurance meets the requirement. Medical provider groups have an incentive to lobby the government to make sure their service is required under the mandate. To the extent that they succeed, the cost of insurance goes up. (That’s how those state regulations arose.) And, of course, people who cannot afford to comply with the mandate must receive subsidies: another cost. And then there is the cost of enforcement. So much for the cost-shifting argument.

And he also addresses the argument from the insurance death spiral:

The new law prohibits insurance companies from discriminating against people on the basis of pre-existing health conditions. They will no longer be able to charge higher prices to sick people. Under this policy, nobody would have any reason to purchase health insurance until they got ill. This would obviously be an unsustainable arrangement. Premiums would rise and rise, and fewer and fewer people would buy insurance. The point of the mandate, then, is to prevent this death spiral.
In other words: The new health-care law first makes health insurance a product no one would voluntarily buy and then makes its purchase compulsory.

Having offered a critique, Ponnuru ends with a brief sketch of an alternative solution to the underlying problem. The column is well worth your time.