No, not really. Progress is messy but it goes in the right direction.
If a business needs someone to work full time but wants to get around giving their employees extra benefits starting at 40/hr, they can easily do that by just giving them an hour less work. No big deal to their productivity. But if they need someone full time and now the benefit starts at 30/hr to ensure that if the employee works essentially full time than they get what they deserve, then that forces the company to evaluate their priorities. Do they really want to avoid providing benefits if it cuts back their productivity, or is the value of having full time workers worth the extra cost?
Suppose they choose to cut back hours. Now instead of having 60 full time workers they have 80 workers at 30 hours/week. They increase their workforce by 1/3, increasing costs like training and paperwork by 1/3. They are also now employing 80 people that will probably go out and get a second job to make up the difference in their income. So now you will have a full time job scheduling your workers to accommodate their second jobs. Your workers are probably going to work at least 20 hrs/week at their second jobs, and so will be overworked when they show up to their job, and maybe even mentally still thinking about their other job.
So you have more staff to accommodate, who are probably going to have lower morale and are more tired, who aren't focusing on their work because they're working out in their minds problems from their other jobs. And maybe their second job actually offers them full time work, so now they've quit and your rollover has increased.
In this hypothetical situation, it would seem more and more attractive to the employer to just provide the health care, or at the very least pay the $2000 fine and keep their employees on full time.
This is why I feel the burden is on the employer. They have always and will always have to work around laws and regulations, and this is just the next example of that.