I watched the exchange. This is more of a question, I may be missing something. Cooper starts with the mandate, then ties in pre-existing conditions and if insurance companies would “go for that”.
1- are mandates and pre-existing conditions tied together in some way???
2- isn’t that just two questions mixed together??
These guys are good at their interview skills and tripping folks up.
Absolutely. That's why the ACA ended up with individual mandates despite Obama saying he was against them during the campaign.
Before the ACA, insurance companies could exclude people with pre-existing conditions. That created a market incentive for people to stay covered, else any conditions they developed while not covered wouldn't be covered if they later signed up for insurance.
But if you impose a regulation that says insurance companies must cover people with pre-existing conditions, that eliminated much of the incentive for people to remain covered. Rather than paying those big premiums everyone month, just pay the little stuff out of your pocket. Don't sign up unless/until something major happens that will be cost you a lot of money.
That sounds great for consumers, but it is not viable for insurance companies to only be collecting premiums from people with expensive claims. They'd go broke fast.
So, if you're going to require insurance companies to cover everyone with pre-existing conditions, you have to mandate that healthy people buy coverage so that their premiums will balance the cost of covering people who are sick.
That's why Cooper phrased the question the way he did - if Trump supported no exclusion of pre-existing conditions, did he then also support the individual mandate that is closely linked to it?