What makes it so distasteful here, apart from being yet another broken Obama promise, is that instead of making it a universal tax burden for a government service (as with most fire departments in places people haven't lost their minds) people pay taxes for it only if they can't or won't buy private insurance. A public mandate, in name or in fact, without a public option remains the worst of both worlds and should be repealed and replaced with something far better. I've yet to see a good argument it's actually ILLEGAL though, so if the SCOTUS strikes it down for specious reasons it would be disappointing, if not surprising.