Sen. Murphy: ‘Tax Bill Has Turned Into a Health Care Bill in the Last 48 Hours’
During a
Click here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLonCDw98Bg&feature=youtu.be) to view a video of Murphy's remarks.
"This tax bill has turned into a health care bill in the last 48 hours," said Murphy. "I was so proud of this committee when we held, I think, three or four hearings to study how we could stabilize the individual market. But the impact of [that] will be dwarfed by the impact of repealing the individual mandate...without a single hearing in this committee. CBO says that premiums are going to go up 10 percent compounding year over year...because of the repeal of the individual mandate. So to most middle class families, yesterday, this bill stopped being a tax bill and started being a health care bill. And this committee, again, is not reviewing it."
The full text of Murphy's remarks is below:
MURPHY:
But the impact of Alexander-Murray should it pass or had it passed, will be dwarfed by the impact of repealing the individual mandate and it is potentially going to come up for a vote in the
CBO admitted that it's very hard to understand what happens when the mandate disappears. It could be catastrophic in the sense that if you keep the requirement that plans continue to price without respect to medical acuity, but you don't require that people buy insurance, the rational individual would not buy insurance until they become so sick that they need care, knowing that they'll never pay any more for it. A rational healthy person simply would not buy insurance with the protection in place and no mandate. At the very least, CBO says that premiums are going to go up 10 percent compounding year over year, simply because of the piece of legislation that the
And the reason that I say that this bill is becoming a health care bill instead of a tax bill, is because from what we understand, the individual income tax relief - which will help about two out of every three middle class families - is temporary. It disappears in seven years. And by seven years from now, premiums will have doubled according to CBO, because of the repeal of the individual mandate.
So seven years from now, an average family will get almost no individual income tax relief because their tax cuts will have expired, and their premiums will be potentially
As we're talking about trying to build healthy communities, how important is it to make sure that we're building safe communities? That if kids fear violence, if kids fear gun homicides, then all the work we do to build resources and health care equity doesn't really matter because their brans have been altered.
I know you've thought a lot about this and done a lot of work around this issue. Talk about the connecting between safe communities and healthy communities.
ADAMS: Thank you so much for bringing up that point because community safety is a critical part of wellness. I'll give you a quick example. I was in
MURPHY: When we talk about gun violence, we tend to think of the impact as being on the victims and on the victims' immediate close set of friends and family. But the fact of the matter is, the impact in these neighborhoods is felt by everyone who has this fight or flight mechanism that sets off in their brain. It's a public health issue and I appreciate your comments on that.
Thank you,
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