President Obama still believes individual U.S. residents should have a legal responsibility to own a minimum amount of health coverage, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.
A provision in the Affordable Care Act, the legislative package that includes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), could require individuals with incomes over a certain level who have no religious to health insurance to own a specified amount of health coverage or else 
pay penalties.
Many state officials and others are suing in federal court to have the provision declared unconstitutional, and a U.S. District Court judge in Pensacola, Fla., has ruled that the provision is constitutional.
"There's been talk on the Hill about reopening up the individual mandate in health care legislation," a reporter asked at the White House briefing, according to a transcript provided by the White House. "How firm is the president and the administration's commitment to that provision, considering that at one point in time, he was not supportive of it?"
"The president had to make a conscious decision about how to ensure that the legislation would prevent the problem that we've seen with free riders," Gibbs said. "In other words, people that never think they're going to get sick and don't get sick, but they get hit by a bus and show up at the emergency room, and then they charge us basically to pay for it."
Making sure that everybody has coverage is an important foundation of the new health care law, Gibbs said.
"The president supports it," Gibbs said. "We've gone to court to maintain it. And as the president has said, we will work with those who want to see improvements in this law regardless of … party. But we believe that individual responsibility is a foundation for this."
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