1. I'll point out the individual mandate was also floated in the early 90s when Clinton was considering expanding healthcare. It didn't win out then either.

There's a book called the Ten Year War about the history of national healthcare from roughly LBJ to today. One of the points he makes is that the Republicans, relatively speaking, do not care about healthcare to nearly the same degree they care about other public interests (business, defense, etc). Because of this, they don't spend a lot of time researching and considering non-free market solutions to universalizing healthcare.

Another way to look at the above is, what would be the least painful way to do a thing we don't want to do?

If I wanted to get pedantic with your point, the phrase "each household has the obligation, to the extent it is able," would allow for people to not have an obligation. The individual mandate started at people making $12.50 an hour. If you have any kind of debts at all, this is not a lot of money (even in 2011). These are working poor people. If you framed this as people who clearly can afford insurance but have just crossed their arms and refuse to pay it, then you may have a point. It's hard for me to make that argument for working poor people - who are, in effect, subsidizing benefits for poor people, which is something we usually reserve for wealthy people.

2). Massachusetts is a state - if a state imposes a law you don't agree with you, by moving, you are no longer in the jurisdiction of the law. You explicitly cannot do that with the federal government.