If it's designed that way. Sound policy isn't easy, or common.
So you force the self employed yard guy to pony up 28K a year in premiums or be fined and pay for his bills, the first 14K of which will be out of pocket anyway, even with the insurance plan, and his kids get three preventative care visits to the doctor and one to the eye doctor and one to the dentist a year out of the deal. Meanwhile he has 2K to keep the lights on and feed the little nippers.
That's the problem with one size fits all, it doesn't.
Let's say he is employed by someone else who can afford to pay him what he 's making, and no more because of a competitive marketplace. (It's lawn care, some folks will pay the neighbor kid to cut it).
You require the employer to pay for insurance for all his employees, but the dollar value of the employee, less wages, less expenses, to the business is less than the cost of the insurance plan. Either there is a pay cut, or the business goes out of business.
Let's say the business owner does what a bunch have: He throws in the towel, apologizes to his (former) employees, and shuts down because he can't keep losing money. That was not why he went into business in the first place.
Now the (former) employee doesn't have a job or an insurance policy, and he still can't pay for his own health care because he has no income. If he's married with kids, they get to sell off assets down to the asset cap, and then qualify for Medicaid, at which point we're all picking up the tab for medicaid, but he can't live at home if the kids are going to get food stamps. I won't go into the rest of the destructive spiral, but it boils down to the fact that government seldom improves the things it touches. Health care is just one more example.
