Republicans take aim at health care law
Congressman Mike Kelly of Butler became one of the first lawmakers in 2017 to take aim at President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
On Wednesday, the four-term Republican introduced legislation to repeal one of the Affordable Care Act’s most controversial provisions: the so-called Cadillac Tax on health plans that are considered generous.
The provision sets a 40 percent excise tax on employer health plans above a cap of $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. Kelly said the tax, were it to be enacted, would result in higher deductibles and fewer services for workers. He said the resulting financial pain would be especially sharp in Pennsylvania, where a majority of people are covered through employer-sponsored health insurance plans.
“It’s just counter to what’s in the best interest of America’s working men and women,” Kelly said.
Supporters of the tax and officials within the Obama administration have said the goal is to reduce health care costs overall by making pricier benefit plans unappealing to employers and workers. But critics contend that it wouldn’t be effective at achieving that goal. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2015 found that the tax could affect as many as 42 percent of employers and employees nationwide.
In December 2015, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agreed to delay the tax’s implementation until 2020 — a move that was considered to be the first step toward an eventual repeal.
Kelly introduced the legislation after House Republicans on Wednesday met with Vice President-elect Mike Pence to discuss the broader strategy behind efforts to totally repeal and replace the ACA. He acknowledged that the bill, HR 173, represented one of the opening salvos of that fight, but said its introduction didn’t have anything to do with the party’s broader plans for chipping away at the ACA.
“It’s first because we put it out first,” Kelly said of the bill’s timing.
Senate Republicans on Tuesday introduced what was truly the first measure in the upcoming fight over ObamaCare, with budget legislation instructing committees in both chambers of Congress to begin repealing the law.
One of those committees, the House Ways and Means Committee, includes Kelly. The committees have until Jan. 27 to produce bills that would each save $1 billion over a decade through rolling back elements of the ACA.
Kelly’s communications director, Tom Qualtere, said that HR 173 would ultimately be folded into the budget reconciliation package that emerges from that process.
