> If you want everyone to pay something, we (as you pointed out) have something for that, it's called taxes. Yep, and that's the catch about politics. The ACA

> If you want everyone to pay something, we (as you pointed out) have something for that, it's called taxes. Yep, and that's the catch about politics. The ACA could've been challenged earlier by the Republicans if it introduced a new tax to pay for itself. That would've been the natural thing to do, and the Democrats were well aware of it. Because of that Republican blockage, they had to hide that fee in the "mandate" instead. Of course the Republicans weren't dupes and sued against it, but the courts sided with the Democrats accepting that the mandate wasn't a "tax". I wish I could come up with a source (it was big news back then), but right now my google search is overloaded with another recent ACA-related budget fight :\ There were many better alternatives to the current ACA as it is, including a single-payer option. But we got the ACA (which started as a Heritage Foundation idea[1], they're a nicely conservative think tank) because that's the best the Democrats could get past the Republicans. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-conservative-think-tank-invented-the-individual-mandate/#3526d555621b http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-c...