Well if you are a family of four making about $35-50k, then your taxes will go up by about $2-2.5k a year since you cannot afford to buy health insurance. - Source here
Regarding kids, yeah you pay a bit more in taxes and a crapload less in child maintenace. I suppose they could remove having kids as a tax write off, but since the spending on a kids GREATLY outweighs the write off, if you are talking pure numbers, you make out better as is.
More like, punctuation please. I get so frustrated reading some of the posts on this message board sometimes. But basically this sums it up: Yes, the government is not making you buy insurance. However, if you do not buy insurance, then you will pay an additional tax. This will be rolled in to your income taxes and could be between $1000-2500 a year. Yes, the government is not making you pay taxes. However, if you do not pay income taxes, then you get charged with income tax evasion. Conviction of tax evasion may result in fines and imprisonment.
You mean creating a special tax just to muscle people into doing what you want for the benefit of huge corporations? No of course not. Comparing to kids though, is a deep, dark reach, and hopefully you washed hands after pulling that one out.