March 22, 2017, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting the 30 percent “continuous coverage” penalty in the health care replacement bill that, according to Kaiser Health News, “increases premiums for people who buy insurance if they have gone 63 consecutive days without a policy during the past 12 months. Their premiums would rise by 30 percent and that surcharge would last for a year”:
“Republicans promised to end the tyranny of the individual mandate but instead, House Speaker Paul Ryan has made it worse, by punishing those who lose their coverage because they lost their job or discontinued it because premiums got too high. This massive increase has a perverse effect of making it harder to get health insurance for those who drop for whatever reason, by hiking premiums of those who attempt to reenter the insurance market by 30 percent as a matter of law.
“This is unbelievably bad. And unlike the individual mandate, there isn’t even a hardship exemption.
“The House needs to stop what they are doing this instant and start over. The 30 percent continuous coverage penalty alone should be reason enough to go back to the drawing board with this bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan does not incentivize purchasing insurance by making it cheaper through market reforms, it punishes those without insurance by making it even more expensive when they want to go buy it.”
Attachments:
“GOP Scraps Individual Mandate But Sets Up New Penalty For Those Skipping Coverage,” By Anna Gorman and Jordan Rau, March 21, 2017 at http://khn.org/news/gop-scraps-individual-mandate-but-sets-up-new-penalty-for-those-skipping-coverage/
Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts.
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