Before the affordable care act (obamacare), health insurance companies would refuse to sell insurance policies to americans who had a pre-existing condition such as heart disease or diabetes. they refused because such customers would end up costing more in paid-out healthcare benefits than the amounts they would pay in insurance premiums (premiums are the cost customers pay to maintain their insurance). remember that many health insurance companies need to make a profit, and as such are careful about the amount of money coming in in the form of premiums. obamacare banned insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. the problem with this part of the law is that more sickly people would now be more likely to sign up for health insurance, while healthy people may only pay for insurance once they get sick. this would create a health insurance pool of patients that would tend to be sick and would potentially drive insurance companies out of business. as a way to increase the amount of healthy people in the insurance pool, obamacare also required that all people must buy health insurance or face a fine. the goal here was to have a mix of healthy and sick people buying insurance. this would allow healthy people to pay for the costs of people who got sick.

what arguments could be made for or against forcing people to buy health insurance?