It works about some things and doesn't work for others. I was simply paying my internet bill for years, until one day over drinks one of my friends told me that he had just called his internet company and asked them to lower his price. I figured, hmm may be I should try this out, it does make sense.
So I called and told them, you see, right now you have a half price for a year for new subscribers. May be you can switch me to that plan because otherwise I may just cancel and sign up again, which means I'm going to waste time and have internet downtime, and you'll have to pay your technicians to disconnect and reconnect me again. Can we just skip the overhead and end up at the end point with the easiest effort. And they said 'sure, I will go ahead and make the change'. So, since then, once a year when my bill doubles, I call them and ask that they extend that pricing, or I may just start sharing my internet with my neighbors, which is a little bit less convenient for me, but a pure revenue loss for them. Has been working like a charm.

On the other hand, the electric company is in a completely different category - I can choose who I buy the energy from, but I still have to go through them for the delivery. They know that they have a monopoly and they have rigid pricing.

As far as healthcare goes, I thought that the Obamacare with all those exchanges would be more loved by the conservatives. I also think that as soon as the society is willing to go for pay before you get any treatment, even emergency, system, then the mandate should be simply dropped off. I mean, if you want freedom, you should be able to live free and reap both the benefits and suffer the consequences of it. But at present our society doesn't allow people to die if they don't carry enough cash, so mandating some minimum contribution from everybody for that privilege seems like a reasonable way to go.