Sources: American Academy of Family Physicians Washington, DC, office and Health Policy Institute of Ohio
Congress passed a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, which President Donald Trump signed into law prior to leaving Washington, DC, for the holidays. GOP lawmakers in both the House and Senate passed the tax cut bill that includes a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate to purchase health insurance (Source: “Federal Tax Bill, Individual Mandate Repeal Passes House and Senate,” Health Payer Intelligence, December 20, 2017).
The bill left intact three provisions in the Internal Revenue Code that the American Academy of Family Physicians had fought to preserve: the student loan interest deduction, the tax-free status of graduate-school tuition waivers, and the deduction for medical expenses. The bill removes the individual mandate of the ACA beginning on Tuesday, January 1, 2019, which the AAFP had asked Congress to preserve.
The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Tax Committee have estimated that a repeal of the mandate could increase the number of uninsured individuals by 13 million from 2018 to 2027 and decrease the federal deficit by $338 billion dollars. The organizations determined that repealing the individual mandate would lower federal deficits, but possibly at the expense of health insurance enrollment.