McClatchy/Charlotte Observer on Monday featured two opinion pieces that address individual mandates to purchase health insurance. Summaries appear below.Merrill Matthews, McClatchy/Charlotte Observer: A proposal to exempt almost 20% of uninsured residents from a Massachusetts law enacted last year that requires all residents to obtain health insurance "undermines everything the state said it was trying to do by mandating coverage in the first place," Matthews, director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, writes in a McClatchy/Observer opinion piece. Matthews writes, "States need to know that there are easier, less costly and less punitive ways to cover the uninsured" than a law that requires residents to obtain health insurance, such as "targeted solutions that help the temporarily uninsured, provide health coverage for the uninsured who have chronic medical conditions and provide alternatives for young healthy people who often don't see the need for insurance." Matthews concludes, "Presidential candidates need to know that, too" (Matthews, McClatchy/Charlotte Observer, 6/25).

Robert Moffit, McClatchy/Charlotte Observer: "In a way, it doesn't really matter" whether the federal government requires U.S. residents to obtain health insurance because "hospitals must treat all who come to their emergency rooms, regardless of their ability to pay," Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, writes in a McClatchy/Observer opinion piece. Moffit writes that all "adults have a responsibility to buy their own health insurance, pay their own health care bills and not shift those costs to others." He adds, "People who do not wish to buy health insurance for whatever reason should be free to do so," but, "in exchange, they must demonstrate in some tangible way that they are really going to pay their own hospital bills" (Moffit, McClatchy/Charlotte Observer, 6/25).

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