Tyler Cowen has a good post on the problems with mandates, namely, mandate creep:

"Breaking a three-day stalemate, the Senate approved an amendment to its health care legislation that would require insurance companies to offer free mammograms and other preventive services to women.

The vote was 61 to 39, with three Republicans joining 56 Democrats and the two independents in favor."

Tyler leaves unexplored what this means for the proposed IMAC/IMAB (the medicare board that is supposed to propose cuts which congress can vote up or down). Ezra Klein and other progressive bloggers consistently tout the IMAC as a central mechanism for cost control. That said, congress voted to include this benefit just as study was released indicating that the US's mammogram protocol is probably too extensive, and thus too expensive for the benefit conferred. Or in other words, that it doesn't pass muster with respect to comparative effectiveness. This was a controversial finding, and I don't have the capacity to know whether it is dispositive. But, it does highlight a tradeoff, the type of tradeoff that the IMAC board will be proposing, ostensibly in order to "bend the curve". To me this says, unfortunately, that the IMAC proposal has little potential of "bending the curve" as Congress will always be loathe to cut benefits (especially seniors' benefits).