"Of course there are issues with any proposal, so I don't want to just pick this one out," says Dr. Walden. "But, yea, there are a couple issues here. One is simply that all people will not comply. There's always going to be some segment of the population that simply won't. So we wouldn't necessarily assure (compliance from) everyone in our country ...

"Another broader issue perhaps is cost. One thing that's happened to health insurance in recent years is that states are requiring what is in health insurance policies. In fact one economist has estimated that states collectively have enacted 1,900 benefit mandates, that is, telling insurance companies you have to have this provision or that provision in your health insurance contract," he adds.

"Now one thing this clearly does it drives up the cost of health insurance, so one idea would be to review these mandates and to the extent possible make many of them optional. This would reduce the cost of a, say, bare-bones health insurance policy and make it more affordable for more people, so that if you did have a mandate that everyone has health insurance, you would have some limited policy that many, many more people could afford."