CAN work. The penalty isn’t anywhere close to what insurance costs, so reducing the penalty to $0 doesn’t change much. Either way, enough people will abandon paid insurance that the gov’t will have to shell out billion$ to keep the healthcare industry afloat (too big to fail, dontcha know).
Exactly as planned.
I don’t think they can “smoke and mirrors” around that.
Besides, one of the major reasons that leftists want it is the “compulsory” aspect of it. Without compulsion, making someone do what they want them to do against their will, what’s the point (to a leftist)?