Dems hit roadblock on statewide individual mandate
A bill introduced at the start of the 2018 legislative session would have mandated that individuals maintain a minimum level of health insurance, effectively replacing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate in all ways but one: the bill had no enforcement mechanism. The ACA used federal income taxes to penalize those without healthcare.
This raised concerns among healthcare interest groups who would otherwise support an individual mandate.
That bill passed out of the
The relatively small section both bills had in common would create a task force to research how the legislature might implement enforcement mechanisms.
The amendment was put forward by the bill's prime sponsor, Sen.
Sen.
"This is a meaningless and symbolic bill," Baumgartner said. "Ninety-nine times out of 100, whenever we do a study around here it's simply a way of gutting a bill and sending it down until next year."
Baumgartner questioned why the bill never contained an enforcement mechanism and called the bill's task force and study a waste of time. Baumgartner, who opposes a statewide individual mandate, said that if the Democratic majority really wanted to, they could come up with some method of enforcing a mandate in "15 minutes," and those enforcement methods could be debated on the
Cleveland agreed Friday to an interview with the
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