“SARAH KLIFF: 'Do you think Obamacare’s mandate is strong enough to make the law work? Or do you think it will need to be strengthened at some point?'

LARRY LEVITT: 'I think of the mandate as going hand in hand with the subsidies. It is entirely possible that both the mandate penalty and the premium subsidy are too small to make coverage affordable and convince enough people that they should buy it.

The bigger the mandate penalty, though, the more responsibility you have to provide subsidies to make sure the coverage is affordable. We’ve heard talk during the campaign from Secretary Clinton about increasing the subsidies. It wouldn’t be a popular issue to talk about increasing the mandate, but both may need to be bigger.'”