> What about someone who notices that they are getting older and are starting to develop aches and pains and decides to start buying health insurance that they had avoided when they were younger because they seemed to have been made out of rubber back then?
That's exactly the reason the ACA made health insurance mandatory, to avoid that scenario which would require insurance companies to make the policies more expensive in order to compensate for the higher average age and worsening average health of the insured pool, which further incentivizes the avoidance, and so on, until we're right back in the same situation with a high-risk pool and unaffordable premiums.
Incidentally, that doesn't mean that avoiding health insurance if you are young and healthy with no dependents is actually a good idea at the outset, since many common health conditions like injuries from car accidents don't particularly discriminate by age.
That's exactly the reason the ACA made health insurance mandatory, to avoid that scenario which would require insurance companies to make the policies more expensive in order to compensate for the higher average age and worsening average health of the insured pool, which further incentivizes the avoidance, and so on, until we're right back in the same situation with a high-risk pool and unaffordable premiums.
Incidentally, that doesn't mean that avoiding health insurance if you are young and healthy with no dependents is actually a good idea at the outset, since many common health conditions like injuries from car accidents don't particularly discriminate by age.