When President Barack Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, there was one thing they wanted everyone to understand: Their plan would not work unless they were to force Americans to buy health insurance.
They wrote this point into the law itself.
"(I)f there were no requirement, many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care," the law says.
"By significantly increasing health insurance coverage, the requirement, together with the other provisions of this act, will minimize this adverse selection and broaden the health insurance risk pool to include healthy individuals, which will lower health insurance premiums," the law says.
"The requirement is essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold," it says.