You don’t buy health insurance, you don’t get a health insurance tax credit makes sense. If that is the way they had set it up, I would not say a word.
But forcing people to buy health insurance or they get a tax penalty is an entirely different story. It may just be semantics to you but giving people an incentive to do something is very much different from penalizing them for not doing something.
The first case you have a choice to get the incentive or not. It will only cost you the incentive. The second case costs you either way. You have to pay for something you would not normally buy. Or pay a tax for not doing it.
I would not label that mere semantics.
“...If that is the way they had set it up, I would not say a word...”
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What difference does it make as to “how they set it up” when the effect is the same?
“...What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet...”
[Romeo and Juliet Act II. Scene II]