Erick the Red wants us to "follow the law" but he doesn't understand what that law says

I've been trying to figure out how conservatives think the ACA actually works. I mean, I want to get past common labels for the law on the right like "socialism" or "government takeover of health care" (which aren't accurate if you know anything about the structure of the law). How do conservative understand the mechanics of ObamaCare?

If this post by Erick son of Erick is representative, they don't understand very much:

The only way Obamacare would ever work is if people behaved irrationally. It is a system that requires the young to go out and by their own insurance, but allows them to stay on their parents’ insurance until they are well into their twenties. The law operates only if people do not behave like people.

Erick makes it sound like the ACA requires under-26 year olds who are already covered by their parents insurance to go out and buy additional insurance. That's not true. The only people subject to the individual mandate are people who otherwise don't have coverage from another source (whether from their parents, their job, a public program like Medicaid or Medicare, etc) So once you understand that, what exactly is Erick's point in the above-quote language? How does it only work "if people do not behave like people"? Why does he think that the law will only ever work "if people behaved irrationally"? What irrational behavior is he talking about? There doesn't seem to be an answer to any of those questions in the post.

Meanwhile, other leading lights of right blogistan cheer Erick's misunderstandings on. VodkaPundit includes the sentences I quote above in an extended block quote from the Red State piece and says that he found himself "nodding in total agreement with every single word" that Erick said. William Jacobson includes it in his approving block quote too. Neither of them seem to realize that Erick hasn't given any example from the actual law to support his point.

(via Memeorandum)