Interesting but impractical idea on healthcare?

Paul Starr notes that one of the biggest objections to President Barack Obama's national healthcare plan is its mandated insurance purchase. He also notes that refusing to let insurers not cover people with pre-existing conditions makes this the easy way to keep the insurance system, under such reform, from collapsing.

He notes that many people, and not just hard-core libertarians, object to the forced buy, and so, he offers an interesting option:
Let individuals opt out of the new insurance system, without a penalty, by signing a form on their tax return acknowledging that they would then be ineligible for federal health insurance subsidies for a fixed period — say, five years.
And, he notes that current "Obamacare" penalties for refusing to buy insurance are low, so he would put in fairly heavy tax penalties.

That said, given Mr. Joe Stark's recent homicide-by-airplane at the IRS building in Austin, the apparent anthrax attack at the IRS site in Ogden, Utah, and the general stridency of many tea party types, the "impractical" in my headline starts to make sense now, doesn't it? Unless Paul Starr wants to hire about 5,000-10,000 new, and armed, revenue enforcement agents, I don't see this going anywhere.

That said, even with the mild penalties of the Obama/Congressional Democrats' plan, whose going to be doing the enforcing?

On the other hand, how exactly does a country like Germany, which distributes vouchers for people to buy private insurance, handle its penalties and enforcement? (Of course, German cultural stereotypes of orderliness and obedience aside, there may be generalization truths behind the stereotypes.)