The president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts responded to the Senate's passage of a tax reform bill containing repeal of the ACA's individual mandate. The mandate requires most Americans have health insurance.
"The individual mandate has been an essential underpinning of health reform access and affordability, since it assures a balanced risk pool in order to prevent premium increases," Andrew Dreyfus said. "A shared responsibility model is the best way to create the largest possible pool of insured so that the financial risk of coverage can be spread among both healthy and sick individuals. This approach has worked with other types of insurance and it has worked in Massachusetts, which has the lowest uninsured rate in the nation. The individual mandate is an important component of the ACA. To simply repeal it without any thought to an alternative, in the context of the tax bill, is not sound policy."
Mr. Dreyfus called for bipartisan legislation to improve the ACA.
The tax bill passed through the Senate 51 votes to 49 early Saturday morning. Every Democrat and Independent voted against the bill, along with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Leaders from the House and Senate will now attempt to reconcile differences between their separate bills.
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