Sen. Susan Collins doesn’t like the idea of ditching the individual mandate as a way of raising money to offset the deficits from the Republican tax cut:
“I am no fan of the individual mandate and I very much want to see tax reform,” she said slowly and carefully. “But I believe taking a particular provision from the Affordable Care Act and appending it to the tax bill greatly complicates our efforts. One of my concerns is that it will cause premiums in the individual markets to go up as healthier, younger people drop out.”
“I have new statistics,” Collins added, patting a thick black binder under her arm, “that show that for some middle-income people, it will cancel out their tax cut. The increased premium would be more than the tax reduction they would get from this bill.”
According to CBO, eliminating the individual mandate will increase premiums about 10 percent. Just think of this as the GOP’s little tax increase on everyone with the gall to buy health insurance via Obamacare.
