The GOP’s Senate version of this year’s tax bill apparently repeals the mandate to purchase health insurance. The Chicago Tribune reports on it here. Business Insider reports on it here.
This is good news.
All fall I have been seeing reports from friends around the country who are being sunk by the purchase-or-perish provision of the “Affordable” Care Act. Neither the fine for not-purchasing, nor the mandatory purchase itself, are affordable for many middle-income families. If you don’t have traditional employer-sponsored insurance, you can expect to go broke paying your poll tax.
Has the ACA been good for the segment of the population who qualifies for the expanded offerings of government-funded insurance? Yes indeed. It is good that people with low incomes be able to have health care. I approve of this.
What is not acceptable is paying for that health care by literally bankrupting citizens in the next income bracket up. It is immoral to destroy a family’s finances by legal fiat.
It is also no help to entrepreneurship. The ACA has the effect of outlawing self-employment for many people in the middle-income brackets.
In summary: If the GOP manages to repeal the insurance mandate, they will be doing the one thing that kinda proves their reason for existing.
If they don’t do the thing? We’re down to zero viable political parties.
The Democrats are so pathetic we ended up with Trump. If the Republicans under Trump are unable to do this one thing . . . what else is there?
Related: DarwinCatholic runs the numbers on the new tax plan here.
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