Volume 391, Number 10117
20 January 2018
WORLD REPORT The tax overhaul pushed by Republicans could jeopardise the ACA’s health insurance marketplaces. Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.
…The new tax law contains a provision aimed at an… administration target, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Next year, it eliminates the ACA’s tax penalty for Americans who disregard the requirement to have health insurance, one of the law’s most unpopular features. Even though the ACA’s health insurance mandate is still quite intact, Trump and others claim there is effectively no mandate without a penalty.
“When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed”, Trump said shortly before signing the tax bill into law last month. “And we’ll come up with something that will be much better, whether it’s block grants or whether it’s taking what we have and doing something terrific.” [full story here]