This report from the Urban Institute examines the relevance of the individual mandate as incorporated in the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). The report compares the expected effects of the ACA as it now stands with the expected outcomes if the individual mandate was overturned by legal challenges.

From the report:  

Few provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) have been as controversial as the individual mandate. Opponents of the mandate see it as a major cost to families who would rather spend their income elsewhere and a significant threat to individual freedom. Supporters view the mandate as essential to market based reform; without it, many healthy people would remain without insurance coverage, premiums for individuals and employers would escalate and insurance markets could become unstable. When the uninsured who can afford premiums do become ill, unaffordable health care costs often get shifted onto the rest of society. In this brief, we compare estimates of what costs and coverage for the nonelderly population would be under the ACA to a scenario in which the individual mandate is eliminated, but all other provisions of the ACA remain unchanged. This is what could happen, for example, if the legal challenges to the mandate were to succeed. For ease of comparison, these scenarios are simulated as if they were fully implemented in 2010.

Full Report: Why the Individual Mandate Matters: Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy Issues (PDF | 671 KB)

Urban Institue. (2010). Why the individual mandate matters: timely analysis of immediate health policy issues. Buettgens, M., Garrett, B., Holahan, J.