WASHINGTON -- Going without health insurance next year won't come cheap: The penalty for breaking Obamacare's individual mandate to get covered will get a lot higher.

It's the least popular aspect of Obamacare, and it might become even more disliked when the penalties increase. In 2016, those who don't have health coverage and don't qualify for one of the many exemptions from the mandate will owe the IRS anywhere from $695 to more than $2,000 -- a big jump up from the minimum penalty of $95 in 2014 and $325 this year . For higher-income families, the number could be even bigger.

The purpose of the individual mandate is to provide a disincentive for people to avoid cover if they can afford it. The requirement often is referred to as the law's "stick," the counterpart to the "carrot" of the subsidies available on the health insurance exchanges to make policies more affordable for low- and middle-income households. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts predicted that the penalty rise would drive more people to sign up for health insurance.

The mandate is especially important as a means to nudge younger, healthier people who aren't heavy users of the health care system to get covered anyway. Their premium dollars go to cover the costs of those who need more medical care. This is vital to the long-term success of the health insurance exchange marketplaces and the insurers that sell on them. Finding the right balance on the exchanges has been a challenge and it is partly to blame for higher rate hikes this year.

Whether the mandate will boost sign-ups or wind up being little more than a nuisance is a subject of dispute. Millions of people went without coverage last year and paid the fine instead. C onsumer research suggests a bigger fine won't change consumer behavior, no matter the expectations of Obamacare's drafters.

Carrie Banahan, executive director of the Office of the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange, which operates Kynect , said that they believed more people would enroll because of the tax penalty.

"We will have messaging around that in early 2016, just reminding individuals that the penalty increased," she said. "It might be significant for your household, you really need to take a look to see if maybe buying coverage is going to be cheaper than the penalty."

Yet President Barack Obama's administration expects modest enrollment growth , despite the higher penalty and the millions of remaining uninsured who could be using the exchanges, during the open enrollment period that started Nov. 15 and runs through Jan. 31.

That partly may be because a bigger mandate fine isn't a significant motivator for people without coverage who are more concerned about whether the insurance is affordable, said Jon Kingsdale, a director at Wakely Consulting who oversaw the implementation of Massachusetts' first-in-the-nation individual mandate in 2006 when he was head of the state's Health Insurance Connector Authority.

"I don't think that the calculus of going from three-something- to six-something-hundred dollars is the magic bullet that's going to convert a whole lot of uninsured to insured," Kingsdale said.

Survey results the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published in June appear to support this argument: Just over one quarter of uninsured people said a bigger fine would make them more likely to get health insurance, compared to 42 percent who said it wouldn't make a difference.

The Obama administration and the state-run exchanges downplayed the mandate and the fine during the 2014 and 2015 sign-up periods, in part because they believe promoting the financial assistance to Affordable Care Act offers for health insurance is a more effective way to attract customers.

"We found that the affordability message really hits home with Idahoans, so that's the message that we're really driving this year," said Pat Kelly, executive director of Your Health Idaho , the Gem State's health insurance exchange.

The federal and state-run exchanges generally have employed that same strategy, but the emphasis may shift now the penalty is higher.

HealthCare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan published a blog post Monday urging consumers to consider the costs they would incur from the fine -- and from exposure to high medical expenses -- if they opted to be uninsured. "Your best option is to learn about the tax credits that are available and to visit HealthCare.gov to enroll in a plan that meets their needs, rather than taking the risk of going without insurance and paying a fee," he wrote.