For health insurance to work properly, everyone must be in the system. This allows risk - and costs - to be spread across the sick and the healthy, the young and the old. The individual mandate is believed to be the easiest way for this to happen.

When people without insurance get sick or hurt, the cost of their care is paid by other users of the health care system and society in general. For example, emergency rooms can't turn away people who are unable to pay, so everyone else ends up sharing the cost of this uncompensated care. When the individual mandate is enacted, millions more people will pay into the system, so there will be more money available to pay for care when people need it.

The insurance industry has long supported an individual mandate. Our biggest concern is that this individual mandate isn't strong enough. The new law calls for an annual penalty of the greater of $695 per person (up to a maximum of $2,085 per family), or 2.5% of household income. And it will be three years before the penalty reaches even that level. At that rate, we think millions of Americans will choose to pay that penalty instead of their premiums.

Yes, insurers will be required to cover everyone.

Beginning in 2014, the new law requires that all individuals have coverage and insurers must offer coverage to anyone, regardless of health status. Insurers cannot vary premiums based on health status either.

Beginning in 2014, states or the federal government will establish "American Health Benefit Exchanges" as an alternate way for people to shop for health insurance from private companies. People who use exchanges will be offered a choice of health plans at different price levels.

Each exchange will set up rules and communication tools to help people make fair, accurate comparisons. Those individuals and small employers who are eligible for subsidies will only be able to claim them by purchasing coverage through an exchange. At first, exchanges will serve individual people and small employers. Later, states will have the option of opening them to larger employers.

Exactly how insurance exchanges will work is unknown at this time, but some people think the experience will be similar to how travel plans can be made on websites like Orbitz^® or Expedia^®.

Health care reform requires all people to buy health insurance if the least affordable plan available to them costs no more than 8 percent of their monthly income, and if that income is above the federal poverty line.

Those who fall within this requirement and don't buy insurance will pay a penalty - which will eventually grow to a maximum of $695 a year per person (up to a maximum of $2,085 per family) or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is greater.

There's no simple answer - it depends on your patients' insurance status and how much he or she needs care.

We believe that the price of insurance on average will increase, especially plans for individuals and small businesses, as a result of certain provisions in the reform legislation. These provisions guarantee richer levels of benefits than most consumers buy today.

Insufficient discounts for the young and healthy will encourage many of them to forgo coverage and pay the penalty instead. New fees and taxes mandated by the new law will also likely increase the cost of premiums as they are phased in. For the millions of individuals and small employers who qualify for subsidies, what they actually pay for insurance themselves may not increase.

Federal agencies must work out how subsidies would be paid. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 20 million American households will be eligible for subsidies. Part of health care reform is an expansion of Medicaid (a program through which state and federal governments provide health insurance for the poor and disabled). Beginning in 2014, people who make no more than 133% of the federal poverty level can receive Medicaid.

Some of the factors driving health insurance premiums:

• Increasing use of the health care system due to an aging population, obesity and chronic illnesses
• New treatments
• Prescription drugs
• Expensive new technologies

Changing the way medical care is paid for by insurers and government programs is considered to be the most effective way to address these factors.

While the new law establishes a few new programs aimed at these cost factors, the law doesn't aggressively attempt to control rising health care costs. How do medical costs affect what people pay for health insurance?