US Senate tax bill accomplishes major Obamacare repeal goal

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The sweeping tax overhaul that passed the US Senate on Saturday contains the Republicans’ biggest blow yet to former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, repealing the requirement that all Americans obtain health insurance.

The individual mandate is meant to ensure a viable health insurance market by forcing younger and healthier Americans to buy coverage to help offset the cost of sicker patients. It helps uphold the most popular provision of the law, which requires insurers charge sick and healthy people the same rates.

Removing it while keeping the rest of Obama’s Affordable Care Act intact is expected to cause insurance premiums to rise and lead to millions of people losing coverage, policy experts say.

The sweeping tax overhaul that passed the US Senate on Saturday contains the Republicans’ biggest blow. /Reuters Photo

“It’s going to take a bunch of healthy people out of the insurance market,” said Craig Garthwaite, director of the healthcare program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Obamacare “is going to collapse even more now,” he said.

Republican lawmakers failed several times this year to scrap the mandate as part of a broader repeal of Obamacare, blocked by opposition from a few of the party’s senators, including Susan Collins of Maine.

Collins, still opposed to removing the mandate, said she voted for the tax bill on Saturday after being assured by Republican leaders that they will support legislation to prop up US health insurance markets.

US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell /Reuters Photo

The tax bill is not yet final. The US House of Representatives and Senate must now reconcile the differences in their respective versions of the legislation.

“Repealing the individual mandate simply restores to people the freedom to choose,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has opposed previous Obamacare repeal efforts, wrote in an opinion piece in Alaska’s Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

US President Donald Trump has said Congress will return to repeal-and-replace efforts next year and over the past several months has taken regulatory and executive actions to steadily undermine the Obamacare law.

A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Ysidro, San Diego, California, US, October 26, 2017. /Reuters Photo

Insurers and leading medical groups have already urged Congress to preserve the individual mandate and warned of “serious consequences” such as rising premiums and a rise in the number of uninsured if it were repealed.

The White House portrays the new tax package as the largest tax cut in US history and says it is aimed at spurring growth and producing higher wages and corporate profits while encouraging tax-shy companies to repatriate their wealth.

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Source(s): AP ,Reuters