From the article:

The individual mandate is a compromise attempt to avoid the obvious solution: Let government — not private companies — provide single-payer, catastrophic health coverage for everyone.

It's not the obvious solution; it's one of several...and the worst one. The best solution is too large for the margin of this book, but:

• encourage employers to stop providing medical insurance, and to transfer their current expenditures for that into employees' salaries


• adjust the tax code so that expenditures for medical insurance and MSAs are non-taxable, inheritable, and with high-enough limits to absorb the "pay increase"


• use the Commerce Clause (appropriately) to enable individuals to purchase such insurance from any provider, in any state


• create a Federally-chartered, non-tax-funded, non-profit insurance entity to provide basic medical insurance to anyone who wants to buy it...but at actuarially-sound rates