After two notable failures in repealing Obamacare despite Republican control on all levels of government, Senate Republicans finally succeeded in gutting the heart out of Obamacare: the individual mandate forcing citizens to purchase insurance. They killed two birds with one stone with their consensus on tax reform, adding an individual mandate repeal in the bill, which passed late Friday night by a vote of 51-49. Retiring senator Bob Corker was the only dissenting Republican vote.
Without the individual mandate, the pillars sustaining Obamacare are finally kicked out from under it. When Democrats fearmongered earlier in the year that repealing ObamaCare would lead to 20 million without insurance, they neglected to read the fine print that 73 percent of those “losses” were simply people voluntarily choosing to no longer purchase health insurance through Obamacare when not fined to do so.
All the other provisions of Obamacare are in effect (for now), but it’s doubtful liberals will let repealing the individual mandate go. But it’s looking like there is little they can do to stop it.
The fight isn’t over yet, however.
According to The Hill, “the Senate tax bill must still be reconciled with House legislation that does not include the mandate’s repeal. But that is unlikely to be a major issue, given support in the GOP conference for repealing the mandate. Moderate Republicans are now pushing for bipartisan ObamaCare fixes to help stabilize insurance markets, setting up a showdown with conservatives.”
More: “The mandate’s repeal was not part of the original tax-reform measure released by the Senate Finance Committee, and Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) previously said he wanted to keep the divisive health-care issue separate from taxes. But President Trump, along with Senate conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), made a vocal public push for its inclusion.”
There’s no question that the tax plan will pass in the House given the Republican majority there, and when that passes, it’s the end of Obamacare as we know it.
It’s about damn time.
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