Individual Health Insurance Mandates and Financial Distress: A Few Notes from the Debtor-Creditor Research and Debates

Although I am a debtor-creditor researcher and not a health law expert, I could not resist the invitation of Dean Gail Agrawal and Professor Elizabeth Weeks to comment briefly on Massachusetts's recent ambitious efforts to secure universal health insurance coverage,' particularly because Massachusetts is not alone in experimenting with mandates to achieve higher rates of insurance. 2 My assessments at this time are necessarily tentative; not only am I a relative novice regarding the nation's "most complicated industry,"3 but the Massachusetts