THE CLAIM: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) defended Obamacare's individual mandate during Tuesday's vice presidential debate, saying that without penalties for Americans who opt out of health insurance, the insurance plan would be He said it would “collapse”.
Fact check: False. The Affordable Care Act's personal mandate was effectively repealed under former President Donald Trump, and the lack of a personal mandate has not caused a market collapse in the past seven years.
Walz said Republicans “fought tooth and nail” to repeal the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) requirement for individuals to purchase health insurance.
Mr. Vance asked Mr. Walz, “Do you think an individual mandate is a good idea?”
Mr. Waltz replied: “I think the idea of making the risk pool wide enough to cover everyone is the only way insurance can work, otherwise it collapses.”
The Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed by Republicans and Trump in 2017, abolished We lowered the personal mandate, or more technically, the penalty for not having insurance, to $0.
Walz argued that without a separate mandate for Obamacare, the Obamacare market would collapse.
More than seven years after Republicans repealed the individual mandate, the Obamacare market hasn't collapsed.
This support for an individual mandate appears to contradict Harris' pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year.
Breitbart News' John Nolte pointed out that the Obamacare mandate flooded the middle class with a $675 tax on not having health insurance. mostly middle class Americans paid Obamacare personal duty surtax.
Nolte explained:
It works like this: If you don't have health insurance, if you don't buy things that a fascist government requires you to buy simply for the sin of being born, the federal government will penalize you. with tax The fine is $675 for each adult in the household and $347.50 for each child in the household, or up to $2,085. OR… If your adjusted gross income is more than the per capita penalty, you will pay 2.5 percent of your adjusted gross income.
According to forbesThe IRS reports that 6.67 million households are soaking wet in the wake of Obamacare mandates. Of those, 5.3 million (or 80%) earn less than $50,000 a year. Almost all of those households, 6.6 million of the 6.67 million households, have annual incomes of less than $200,000.
He added: “The average tax paid by people earning less than $50,000 was $340.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter at Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
