EDITORIAL: Experts were right: Tax cuts and repeal of the individual mandate won’t help most Americans
It is refreshing to hear
Speaking about the repeal of the mandate that required Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, Price said: "There are many, and I'm one of them, who believes that that actually will harm the pool in the exchange market, because you'll likely have individuals who are younger and healthier not participating in that market, and consequently that drives up the cost for other folks within that market."
Price, who left the administration in September after it was revealed that he took expensive charter flights at taxpayer expense, made the comments at the
If this logic -- that fewer people in the health insurance pool will mean higher costs for those that remain -- sounds familiar, it is because health care and insurance experts, and the
In November, the budget office projected that 13 million fewer Americans would have health insurance by 2027 as a result of the elimination of the individual mandate. It also said average premiums in the exchanges would increase by about 10 percent in most years over the next decade, compared to leaving the mandate in place.
"Those effects would occur mainly because healthier people would be less likely to obtain insurance and because ... the resulting increases in premiums would cause more people to not purchase insurance," the budget office said at the time.
Sen.
Already the number of people without health insurance is rising. The uninsured rate among working age adults has risen to 15.5 percent, from 12.7 percent in 2016, according to the
Last week, Rubio spoke the truth about the Republican tax cuts passed last year. Like Price, however, he is no hero because he voted for the tax cut plan.
"There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they're going to take the money they're saving and reinvest it in American workers," Rubio said in an interview with The Economist. "In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there's no evidence whatsoever that the money's been massively poured back into the American worker."
As if to bolster this point, Apple on Tuesday announced
Many experts said the tax cut package, and the repeal of the individual mandate that it included, would be bad for average Americans. It is discouraging that some
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