In The Philadelphia Inquirer is an 'article' called 'Obamacare: A bad deal for young people'

[solarhydrocan]

18. Yes it was

The health insurance mandate in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is an idea hatched in 1989 by Stuart M. Butler at Heritage in a publication titled "Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans".[21] This was also the model for Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts.[22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_foundation#Policy_influence

Here's the original paper by Stewart Butler, Heritage foundation.

Notice how they used the Auto insurance argument so popular with third way "liberals"

Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans

2) Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance. Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seatbelts for their own protection. Many others require anybody driving a car to have li a bility insurance.

But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement. This man d ate is based on two important principles.

First, that health care protection is a responsibility of individuals, not businesses. Thus to the extent that anybody should be required to provide coverage to a family, the household mandate assumes that it is the family that carries the first responsibility. Second, it assumes that there is an implicit contract between households and society, based on the notion that health insurance is not like other forms of insurance protection.

If a young man wrecks his Porsche and has not had the foresight to obtain insurance, we may commiserate but society feels no obligation to repair his car. But health care is different. If a man is struck down by a heart attack in the street, Americans will care for him whether or not h e has insurance. If we find that he has spent his money on other things rather than insurance, we may be angry but we will not deny him services - even if that means more prudent citizens end up paying the tab.
http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/assuring-affordable-health-care-for-all-americans

Why is anyone surprised? Obama told us all his policies are republican ones from the 80's