Originally Posted by Xurtio

It doesn't particularly matter. As long as they're paying their fines they're contributing to the safety network.

The whole point was the health care was already a mess and costing the government a lot of money to manage haphazardly. Both dems and reps had their solutions (and they weren't functionally all that different really).

Fining people is one way to recoup costs from when those fined people go to the emergency room without a plan. They don't need to get a health insurance plan for ACA to work, they just need to pay their fines and the fines need to be sufficient to outweigh the costs of uninsured injuries.