Let me ask you, what is to stop them from just amending the penalty into a tax, and then issuing a tax credit equal to the tax to all who purchase health insurance?
Granted they would have to force EVERYONE to file and the poorest to actually pay them, but wouldn’t that be an out?
USUAL DISCLAIMER: I’m not an attorney...yet. But to answer your question, I think this is pretty much what they are doing now. They are disguising a penalty for not buying insurance by calling it a “tax” that the IRS will collect if you don’t buy. The “tax” is nothing more than a penalty. But the most perverse thing about all this is they are penalizing not child labor, not sex offenders, no nothing like that, they are penalizing you for being a citizen. Even illegals don’t have to pay the “tax.”
a Tax IS a penalty.
The filibuster