Lets face it. Obamacare is a MASSIVE GIFT to the insurance industry. It has problems. Real universal, single payer healthcare would have been 100x better. I DO wish all the insurance companies would go bankrupt and disappear tomorrow, but they wont.
But we don't have to make up lies about it. (Oh, death panels, how often do you need to be debunked).
The main benefit is preexisting conditions. A lot of people, perhaps people you know, can't get insurance on the open market. This is a problem. Forget affordable, I know people who won't get insurance at any price. This will cost insurance companies money, which they make up by having more people covered.
A secondary benefit is cost. Cost is supposed to be constrained by a few things, starting state insurance pools for one and reducing medicare payouts (that attack line about Obama's medicare cost is actually about savings by not over paying and therefore reducing waste.)
Now, some states did not move forward on the pools until the supreme court ruled, and others are saying they won't no matter what penalty they face. Secondly, if insurance really is unaffordable you won't be taxed or penalized as long as the insurance is more than some percentage of your income. So yes, if you can't afford it, it wont cost you more.
I do doubt just how cheap the affordable options will be. Still, I don't see the point of tearing it up before its working just because some parts of it might not work. Lets actually see if it works first, there have been no large scale crises early in the rollout.
*I have a problem with calling health care a consumer product. I can say I will not buy a TV and I will never have a TV. I can say I will never use the health care system, but if I get hit by a bus I'd probably be treated long before I come around enough to refuse treatment.
Anyway, to some degree, the government does require the purchase of some items already. Clothes, or face criminal charges (not just civil like healthcare!), a house, or face vagrancy laws in some areas (even Portland tries to keep people off the sidewalks), or a car through promoting car dependent zoning.