[ctdonath]

Even if it's just $95, the point is the same: if you don't buy this product, you are fined and the police power of the state can be brought down upon your head if you don't pay up. Endless stories abound of people losing homes, savings frozen/confiscated, incarcerated, etc. over non-payment of seemingly trifling amounts. Heck, the whole Branch Davidian incident (50+ day standoff, dozens shot or burned to death) boiled down to alleged (!) non-payment of a $200 tax.

And it's not that a person doesn't have health insurance (though some truly don't need it, being sufficiently wealthy), it's that one is penalized for not having a particular kind of health insurance. Some of us are quite content to pay our way cash, insuring only for catastrophic events...but, for some reason, our legislators deem that punishable, requiring us to sign up for undesirable services at outrageous costs via a grossly dysfunctional website.

This nation was created in opposition to such taxation & penalties, hence a lot of citizens stressing out despite "it's just a little fine, so pay & be done with it." A government which threatens[1] severe consequences for non-compliance with "trivial" regulations should not be surprised by severe pushback from those not inclined to comply.

[1] - for all the "we won't garnish your wages etc." verbiage on the website in question, I'm not seeing any legal basis for anything other than IRS-standard severe consequences for non-payment of penalties.

[GVIrish]

Well, if someone doesn't want to pay for health insurance they should either have to pay out of pocket when they have to go to the emergency room, or not receive medical attention at all.

Since we've collectively made the choice to not turn away people who show up to the emergency room, here we are. I'd be all for axing the individual mandate if we decided to shut people out of the emergency room.

On balance, it seems far more humane to go with the individual mandate and penalties than it does to let poor people die on hospital door steps. Although it is possible that after people realize a ignominious death awaits them if they don't buy health insurance, maybe everyone will be scared into buying it.

[hga]

According to the law, HHS can't garnish your wages etc. As far as I know, it's silent on the IRS doing that ... which of course is the organization tasked with collecting those fines.

Little else to add, except that we might remember how the drafters of the 16th Amendment, which authorized the Federal income tax, decided not to cap it at 10%, fearing that would be a ceiling soon reached.