Former Trump aide pans tax law

PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s former top health official on Tuesday said the Republican tax law would raise the cost of healthcare insurance for some Americans because it repealed a core provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Tom Price, Trump’s first secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said people buying insurance on government-run marketplaces would face higher prices because the tax law repealed the ACA’s individual mandate. The mandate had forced most Americans to have health coverage or face a financial penalty.

“There are many, and I’m one of them, who believe that actually will harm the pool in the exchange market, because you’ll likely have individuals who are younger and healthier not participating in that market, and consequently that drives up the cost for other folks within that market,” Price said at the World Health Care Conference in Washington.

The remarks received widespread attention, and on Wednesday, Price changed his message, saying in a statement that repealing the mandate was “exactly the right thing to do”.

“The only fair and effective way to bring down healthcare costs is to allow markets to create more choices for consumers and small businesses,” Price said. “The only fair and effective way to bring down healthcare costs is to allow markets to create more choices for consumers and small businesses.”

Price’s comments are in line with predictions from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which in November projected that 13 million fewer Americans would have healthcare insurance by 2027 as a result of the elimination of the individual mandate.

The office also said average premiums in the exchanges would increase by about 10% in most years over the next decade, compared with a scenario in which the mandate had been left in place.

“Those effects would occur mainly because healthier people would be less likely to obtain insurance and because, especially in the non-group market, the resulting increases in premiums would cause more people to not purchase insurance,” the CBO said at the time.

Democrats cited the CBO’s projections in making their case against the tax law last year, and seized on Price’s remarks on Tuesday.