"It does nothing for you in the immediate, and in fact may neer do anything for you period" is integral to the meaning of "insurance".

However shocking you may find that fact. Social security has always been designed and discussed as insurance in every country that has it, including the US. The Social Security Act covers more than that, but that's OK, because retirement income isn't the only form social insurance can take. The very premise of the retirement income aspect, however, was to provide a form of earnings insurance for people who lived beyond the age where they could work (hence it initially set the retirement age at 65, despite the fact that average US life expectancy remained well below that age until the fifties). Insurance, btw, is a service, not a product, not that really matters either way here. Incidentally, I've recently made on this very site the same argument Wikipedia notes on FICA: That because the payments are returned (with substantial interest) to anyone who lives long enough to collect them, it's not a true "tax" at all (though Wikipedia also notes that the SCOTUS the SCOTUS has ruled no one has an inherent right to their SS benefits).

This particular legal case is funny because Obama is in trouble mainly for NOT doing just what conservatives forbade and liberals demanded in the healthcare bill: Mandating enrollment in PUBLIC rather than various PRIVATE health insurance programs. Had he made it a public program he could have made it a public duty with ample SCOTUS precedent, but requiring people get it from private insurers effectively compels people to provide a private company profits or pay a penalty for not doing so, unpopular with everyone. Whether it's unconstitutional remains to be seen, but these days we decide constitutionality based on whoever currently happens to have political power rather than what the document actually says (see: "USA PATRIOT Act" ).