There are a number of problems with this legislation (I am trying to ignore the fact that ALL legislation is ALWAYS evil) most important of which are:
1. It forces people who don't want to buy health insurance to pay for it.
2. It covers people who are too stupid to buy health insurance, not only the ones that can't afford it.
3. It will eventually lead to the end of privately run insurance and turn the USA into another socialized medicine state.
Since point 1 and 3 are pretty self-explanatory and everyone with any respect for human rights will agree are bad things (1 is a form of slavery and 3 tremendously reduces quality of life; there are thousands of articles already written about this), I will only discuss point 2.
Let's use a real life example:
There are three men. Two of them have $1000 and the third has nothing. The first decides to buy a health insurance policy or to save the money in case of a medical emergency, and the second decides to buy a 50" TV. The third has no money so he does nothing. Now if all three caught some potentially fatal disease, the first man would most likely be taken care of and survive, while the second and third would have little chance of survival (beyond charity). In a normal capitalism world, the two latter men would most likely be taken care of anyway because charity would be bountiful, but let's suppose that the charities only have enough money to save one of them. If the charities then look at the situation, they will most likely choose to save the third man (the poor one) because he had no means of saving himself. The second man (i.e. the idiot who has a very high time preference schedule) would in that scenario have to die. At the end of the day two men would be alive and both left with no money while another would be dead. Also, the health insurance company of the first man and the charity of the third man poorer by whatever cost it took to cure them (say $5000).
But suppose the exact same situation took place in a state which forces people to engage in socialized medical practice. All three men would be covered fully by the national health service provider. The entire cost of treatment for their disease (say $5000) would be payed out of the national pool of money reserved for health care. And let's assume the insurance premium was the same as in a capitalist world ($1000 per person) even though in socialist economies it would likely be much higher. If this situation was resolved all three men would remain alive at the end (I am not taking into account the chronic inefficiency and unethicality of socialized health care systems which have a high probability of not saving the three men), but the country would be $15000 poorer! Of course it would have the $2000 that was paid in premiums by the first and second men (the second man now HAS to pay), but the third man is still not paying. Instead the remaining money ($13000) is a subsidy that these three get from ALL OTHER TAXPAYERS. It is therefore a forced redistribution of wealth. Also, importantly, the second man has now survived! Despite being a short-sighted individual he still has a chance to do damage to the entire society! Moreover, man number 1 is likely to realize his responsibility does not aid him in any way and will become increasingly short-sighted himself, as will all their offspring and people they influence.
Thus socialism leads to the process Decivilization - it subsidizes fools and taxes the frugal citizens in order to do it.
Therefore the issue here is not only that, as James Madison famously said, "charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government" but also the deeper problem of decivilization.
Today I will end with a quote from Herbert Spencer: "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."
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