Washington Examiner
Republican senators seek to stop DC's individual mandate
By Robert King
A group of six GOP senators want to stop the District of Columbia’s effort to create their own individual mandate that every city resident get health insurance.
The senators introduced on Tuesday an amendment to an appropriations bill that would stop federal funds from re-implementing the mandate’s financial penalty. The tax reform law zeroed out the penalty starting in 2019.
“We need to finish the job on Obamacare, not prop it up with a broken system,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, one of the six senators to introduce the amendment.
GOP Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, and Marco Rubio of Florida joined Cruz in introducing the amendment.
The House already passed an amendment to stop the D.C. mandate in a spending bill.
The District isn’t the only locality seeking to create a new individual mandate to replace the federal penalty. New Jersey and Vermont have already passed their own individual mandate and Massachusetts has had a mandate on the books since 2006.
Insurers are worried that the loss of the penalty will cause younger and healthier people to not sign up for Obamacare, causing further destabilization in the law’s insurance marketplaces.
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