By Dylan Scott@dylanlscottdylan.scott@vox.com |
President Donald Trump barely mentioned Obamacare in his first State of the Union speech, though the issue dominated much of his first term in office.
But he did take a few seconds to highlight the GOP’s success in repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as part of their tax overhaul.
“We eliminated an especially cruel tax that fell mostly on Americans making less than $50,000 a year, forcing them to pay tremendous penalties simply because they could not afford government-ordered health plans,” Trump said in the House chamber. “We repealed the core of disastrous Obamacare. The individual mandate is now gone.”
Trump is right on the surface, of course: The mandate is gone, and it was originally considered core to the ACA. But these days, most experts largely believe that the tax penalty for not having insurance was actually too low to have the desired effect, even as Trump cites its “tremendous” nature” and that the law’s markets will survive — if imperfectly — without it.
Source: VOX
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