of course no one wants to be told what to spend their money on, but we are required by law to have car insurance - because after all, what happens if you get hit by a guy who doesn't have car insurance? guess what, you're out thousands of dollars in repairs even though you didn't do anything wrong
similarly to that scenario, for a long time now people WITH health insurance have been paying for others without it -- what happens is people who don't have health insurance get sick or hurt and go to the emergency room -- the hospitals are required by law to treat them, and so the hospitals who don't get paid by all those people make up the difference by charging more for everything they do, which makes it so that the health insurance companies have to pay the hospitals more when the people who are on their insurance policies get sick or hurt - rather than pay for the difference themselves, the insurance companies pass the extra cost along to their customers --- people who HAVE health insurance, by raising their premiums, and doing things like denying people coverage or dropping them completely or capping the amount of money they'll spend on them in a year or a lifetime -- and so on
the solution the democrats have come up with is not a perfect one, but it does WAY more good than it does harm - and the 'individual mandate' to buy health insurance puts 30 million more people into the risk pool (amount of people contributing to the total amount of money available to treat people), which ensures there is more than enough money to take care of
some other things it does:
> insurance companies have to spend 85% of the money they make on health care and not crap like advertising and lobbying Congress...
> insurance companies can no longer drop you from coverage for 'pre-existing conditions'
> kids stay on their parents' health insurance until age 26 now
and there are other good things I forgot, and of course there are drawbacks, but remember that this bill can be improved over time
so there are a lot of criticisms of this bill, and from BOTH sides of the political spectrum - but what you have to remember is that any time you do something this complicated there is absolutely no way to please everyone - this bill, in all fairness, is right down the middle - most of the aspects of it were proposed by Republicans in recent years, and the liberals are all pissed off that it passed
when both parties in a negotiation come away from the deal unhappy, I think that actually IS the definition of a fair deal
one other thing too - a little-known fact is also that included in this bill the states are NOT required to comply with the individual mandate - provided they meet the minimum standards for health care that this new bill lays out, so it's not like you're being forced by the government -- only if your state can't come up with a better way to provide healthcare - and then only because without the individual mandate, other people would have to pay for your sorry ass
I don't like it either, but at least this way everyone is chipping in
