Oh, shut up, you morons

You'd think that congress had just passed a bill outlawing stupidity, because boy are the wingnut bloggers and their commenters out in full force claiming their right to it. Obamacare sucks, I shouldn't have to pay, soshulism waah and all the other usual aside, there are actually those who are all like: Armed revolution! Secession of conservative states! You can have my insurance premiums when you pry them from my cold, dead hands!

And then there's this: "I will be forced to pay for coverage, whether I want it or not. I will be forced to pay for the coverage of others, whether I want it or not."

Yes, you will be forced to pay for coverage, whether you want it or not, as long as you are employed. That is true, and believe it or not I'm at least mildly sympathetic to the idea that people shouldn't be forced to buy health insurance. However, if you have insurance already, you are already paying for others unless you are using more than you put in. That's, y'know, how insurance works.

And what if you don't have coverage and you get hit by a car and suffer severe injuries that take many days of hospitalization, the services of multiple specialists, and so forth? Assuming you aren't wealthy (and if you are, why don't you have insurance?), you aren't going to be able to pay that off anytime soon. In fact, you probably aren't going to be able to pay it off at all. That's why there are so many bankruptcies driven by medical bills; that shit's expensive. So you end up 100 grand in debt and you end up having to file for bankruptcy and the hospital doesn't get the money but they still have to pay all those salaries and facilities costs and equipment usage costs, so they end up recouping their money by raising costs across the board for everyone else, and when the next person comes in who has the same lack of coverage for a major incident, it happens again, and then you get... what was it... oh yeah! Our current health care costs! (And yes, there are more factors than this, but this one sure doesn't help.)

And that is how you already pay for other people's health care. Getting people to get coverage even if they don't think they need it is one of the ways they're trying to make that happen less often. That may not be the perfect solution for many reasons but right now it's one of the easier ways to try to help the situation.