Obamacare and the individual mandate does not force anyone “to buy a product,” according to the attorney who developed the legal defense of the legislation for President Obama, who also said that Americans oppose the law because they’re “afraid of change.”

“The challengers to the reform say that never before has the government forced people to buy a product,” Neal Katyal, who defended the legislation in appellate courts while serving as Obama’s acting solicitor general, said in an interview with AFP. “We’re not forcing you to buy a product. Health care is something all Americans consume, and you don’t know when you’re going to consume it.” Katyal added that “we are not regulating what people buy, we’re regulating how people finance it.”