The Pacific Research Institute’s Sally Pipes ? a former John Locke Foundation Shaftesbury Society speaker ? explains in a new Human Events column why ObamaCare’s “individual mandate” is especially odious:

During the run-up to Obamacare?s passage, the White House claimed that the individual mandate would lower healthcare costs by expanding the insurance pool. The young and healthy — many of whom currently go without coverage ? would be forced to buy into the system and would help subsidize care for the aged and infirm.

But most of the uninsured ? particularly the young and healthy ? don?t go without coverage because they?re irresponsible. They opt not to purchase insurance because it?s too expensive.

Obamacare does little to make insurance more affordable. In fact, with all its new mandates requiring no-cost preventive care, low annual deductibles, and coverage for adult children up to age 26, the health reform law will actually raise premiums. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that individual insurance premiums under reform will be 10 to 13 percent higher by 2016 than they would be in the absence of reform.

By the time the mandate is in full effect, the average individual insurance policy is expected to cost about $5,000. For many Americans, it will make far more sense to forego insurance and pay a small fine than to fork over several thousand dollars for insurance they?ll never use.

Many residents of Massachusetts came to exactly that conclusion when the state mandated insurance coverage as part of its 2006 healthcare overhaul.

Four years later, 168,000 Bay State adults still don?t have health insurance. More than half of them — 97,000 ? did not buy insurance even though they could afford a policy, according to the state Department of Revenue. Of those, 86,000 paid the penalty, and 11,000 appealed it.

Clearly, many in Massachusetts bristled at the notion that the government could force them to buy an expensive product that they may not have wanted. Residents of the other 49 states will no doubt feel the same way ? particularly when the U.S. Constitution does not grant the federal government the power to force people to purchase goods and services from the private sector.