I don’t want to get too political on this blog, but here’s some helpful perspective from TPM on the healthcare thing:
Whatever you want to call it — tax, fee, penalty, incentive, Robert — even though it does raise some money, the key is that it will snag relatively few people.
How few? “It only applies to people who do not have health care insurance and refuse to get it after receiving subsidies that allow them to buy it.”
Also, here’s a good explanation from (the 2007 version of) Mitt Romney:
[W]e established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did … encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.”
Seems fair to me.