Although health economics provides a useful starting point for such analyses of coverage, the ultimate effect of a mandate is not easily reduced to, and in fact could differ from, the predicted effect of treating penalty amounts as dollar-for-dollar equivalents to subsidies. People can respond to penalties and subsidies differently and in ways that are not considered in standard health economics models. As a result, modeling structures originally designed to estimate how coverage choices could change when subsidies are offered could be insufficient for examining mandates alone or in combination with other coverage-related policies
