[KrisAndrew]

No.

Imagine you're a gig worker who makes $2500/mo. $750 goes to your apartment, $500 goes to taxes, $200 goes to your car payment and auto insurance, $200 goes to groceries, $180 goes to your cell phone and utilities, $120 for some credit cards you make minimum payments on, another $120 for gas, maybe $150 for clothes and entertainment.

That leaves you with $280/mo in disposable income. Requiring Obamacare will extract $80-$120/mo for the lowest level of coverage that has high deductibles and is generally useless. You could pay another $100/mo and get the next level up, but your ability to save for anything at all is now completely gone. All you can look forward to is a few hundred dollars on your tax return.

Health care must be free to make sense in this context.

[johnrob]

At least they have the option of buying it (if they have the money). The prior issue with health care was that, in lieu of working for a large enough company, those who needed it couldn't buy it at any price.

[KrisAndrew]

They can have the cake, but not eat it, no?

They don't have the option to enroll or not. They have to or they get penalized. The penalty is small; $95 per person, but this is really just another tax on a growing margin of society that can't shoulder more taxes.

The health care industry has already responded to the situation in a more sensible way. Many urgent care clinics have popped up in the last few years. They'll handle most run-of-the-mill health concerns for $100-$200 a visit. Many drugstore chains have started their own prescription clubs that cover a pretty wide range of common medications for very reasonable amounts.

If you're a healthy individual who visits the doctor twice a year and maybe you need a prescription or two, then it makes more sense to pay for your health care on an as-needed basis. You'll save more money. Obamacare didn't really solve the major issues with health insurance. They missed the mark because industry already stepped in to provide a solution. If they wanted to solve the problem vis-a-vis affordability for marginal workers, the solution would have been to make it free.

Just like with gay marriage and openly gay military members, we'll get there eventually, but people are still suffering because of the painfully incremental way legislature works.

[vampirechicken]

We wanted National Health Service. We didn't get that. We got mandated insurance. No wonder nobody's happy about it.