UPI Top Stories December 17, 2019
A
congressional committee released a report Tuesday found that the repeal of
three Affordable Care Act taxes as part of a government spending deal would
cost the government $373.3 billion over 10 years.
Congress'
Joint Committee on Taxation, which is the companion of the Congressional Budget
Office, analyzed the cost of repealing the three taxes from 2020-29.
The
taxes were passed to help fund the Affordable Care Act's expansion, but have
been repeatedly suspended and are not currently in effect. They include a 40
percent excise tax on high-cost "Cadillac" employer-sponsored health
insurance plans, a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices and a tax on
health insurance providers.
The
repeals would cost nearly $197 billion, $25.5 billion, and $150.8 billion,
respectively, over 10 years, the committee found.
The
House passed a $1.4 trillion spending deal Tuesday as the first step in an
effort to avert a government shutdown. The package included the repeal of the
three Affordable Care Act taxes.
The
repeals are a win for the health insurance and medical device industry, which
have lobbied against them and the the Alliance to Fight the 40, a group of
employers, insurers and others who opposed the Cadillac Tax. The Alliance to
Fight the 40 said "higher costs" and "shrinking coverage"
have hit families due to the "looming tax."
"Democrats
are protecting the quality, affordable healthcare of millions by permanently
repealing health care taxes," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said
in a statement Monday on the spending deal while noting the deal blocks
President Donald Trump from taking certain actions to "sabotage" the
Affordable Care Act.
Still,
Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a
progressive think tank, criticized proposals to repeal the taxes in a statement
Tuesday.
"At
a moment when policymakers should focus on reducing health costs and raising
revenues to expand health coverage, this legislation repeals an important
cost-reducing measure and sacrifices hundreds of billions of dollars in
revenue," Greenstein said in the statement. "In addition, the
agreement provides two years of additional Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico and
the other territories, short of the four years of funding that lawmakers had
previously agreed to on a bipartisan basis."
Brian
Riedl, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, said that the
repeal of the taxes exposes "the fraud that ObamaCare was fiscally
responsible and fully paid for," in a Twitter post.
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