{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=93FA1E2E-A973-46EA-8267-917723B6D640", "Barrasso: Tax Reform Bill Repeals Obamacares Individual Mandate", "2017-11-29", "2017", "2017-11", "Republican", "House", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "\u201cFamilies ought to be able to make decisions about what they want to buy and what works for them \u2013not the government. I believe if people don\u2019t want to buy the Obamacare insurance, they shouldn\u2019t have to pay a tax penalty to the IRS.\u201d\r\nClick here to watch Sen. Barrasso\u2019s remarks.\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014 Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor on how under the Senate tax relief plan, people would no longer have to pay a tax penalty if they don\u2019t want, or can\u2019t afford, expensive health insurance.\r\nExcerpts of Senator Barrasso\u2019s remarks:\r\n\u201cThis week we\u2019re debating the Republican tax relief plan. There\u2019s a lot to like in this legislation.\r\n\u201cIt gives tax cuts to hard-working American families. It makes taxes simpler, and fairer.\r\n\u201cIt makes American businesses more competitive around the world. It makes our economy stronger here at home.\r\n\u201cWell that\u2019s all good news for our country \u2013 and for the American people.\r\n\u201cThere\u2019s other good news in this legislation, and it\u2019s something I continued to hear about at home over the Thanksgiving recess in Wyoming, is that it wipes out the Obamacare insurance mandate tax.\r\n\u201cThis is the tax penalty that the Obama health care law forced on the American people.\r\n\u201cUnder the Republican plan, people would no longer have to pay a tax penalty to the IRS if they didn\u2019t want the Democrats\u2019 expensive health insurance \u2013 or if they just couldn\u2019t afford it.\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve seen health insurance premiums skyrocket over the past few years in this country, and it\u2019s because of the way Democrats wrote the health care law.\r\n\u201cThe costs as well as the deductibles are so high that many people find that even if they have paid for the expensive insurance, the deductible is so high, that they still can\u2019t afford to get the care they need.\r\n\u201cThe law says that no matter how expensive the insurance gets, or how unusable it is for that individual, people by law, still have to buy it or pay a tax.\r\n\u201cFamilies ought to be able to make decisions about what they want to buy and what works for them \u2013not the government.\r\n\u201cI believe if people don\u2019t want to buy the Obamacare insurance, they shouldn\u2019t have to pay a tax penalty to the IRS.\r\n\u201cA single woman would have to pay a tax of either $695 or two-and-a-half percent of her income, whichever is higher.\r\n\u201cIf it\u2019s a couple, the tax could be double that.\r\n\u201cIf it\u2019s a family with kids, they pay additional tax for each of the children.\r\n\u201cA majority of Americans say that they don't even have enough savings today to cover a $500 emergency expense if one came up.\r\n\u201cSo who actually pays?\r\n\u201cOf these over 16,000 people in Wyoming who paid the penalty \u2013these are hardworking men and women.\r\n\u201cAcross the country, we see over six million people who were hit with this extra tax.\r\n\u201cThe Obamacare insurance mandate tax is a direct tax on the working people of this country.\r\n\u201cI think it\u2019s not right. The Republican Party members of the Senate think it\u2019s not right.\r\n\u201cWashington should not make people pay higher taxes just because they can\u2019t afford expensive Obamacare insurance.\r\n\u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t be forced to buy a product that\u2019s not the right choice for them and their family.\r\n\u201cThe Congressional Budget Office says that if we get rid of the insurance mandate tax, 13 million people will eventually decide not to have insurance.\r\n\u201cThese people don\u2019t view it as a good benefit for them.\r\n\u201cThey don\u2019t view it as worth the money.\r\n\u201cRepublicans want to give all of these people a tax cut.\r\n\u201cDemocrats want to make sure that people still have to pay the tax penalty.\r\n\u201cThere\u2019s a lot that I want to change about how America\u2019s health care system works.\r\n\u201cI want to repeal the entire health care law that Democrats wrote a few years ago.\r\n\u201cI haven\u2019t given up on trying to get that done \u2013 because we need to make health care better in this country.\r\n\u201cIn Wyoming, we\u2019re down to just one insurer willing to sell these policies. And that\u2019s happening more and more around the country.\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s left many people at the breaking point.\r\n\u201cI got an email from one man in Sheridan Wyoming.\r\n\u201cHe talked about the fact that his monthly premiums are going up by more than $700 a month next year.\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s for two adults, no children, and a deductible of $6,000.\r\n\u201cHe and his wife are stuck in a position where they\u2019ll have to pay more than $2,400 a month for insurance \u2013 or pay an extra tax.\r\n\u201cAnother woman, from Park County Wyoming, wrote to me that her family had to switch insurance plans a couple of years ago. The coverage they had before was canceled.\r\n\u201cThis lady writes about the incredible increase in the costs. She said, \u2018what are we supposed to do?\u2019\r\n\u201cI\u2019ve heard from all corners of the state of Wyoming, what are they supposed to do?\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe that these people should face a choice between paying sky-high insurance premiums or a sky-high tax penalty to the IRS.\r\n\u201cThe people of Wyoming, people around the country, they want to buy insurance that\u2019s affordable, that works for them and fits the needs of them and their families.\r\n\u201cThey just don\u2019t want to be forced to buy the insurance that Washington tells them they have to buy.\r\n\u201cPeople want the coverage that they need, so they can go to the doctor that they want at lower costs.\r\n\u201cI wanted to point out also, that the cost of the insurance isn\u2019t the only problem that we\u2019re looking at right now.\r\n\u201cThere are other parts of the health care law that may actually be harming patients.\r\n\u201cAs a physician, I receive multiple medical journals, and there was a new study out. And the conclusion of Journal of the American Medical Association, their cardiology journal, that looked at Medicare patients who are hospitalized with heart failure.\r\n\u201cThere\u2019s a program in the health care law that started to penalize hospitals if that Medicare patient was readmitted to the hospital within 30 days after they had been released from the hospital.\r\n\u201cThere are a number of reasons that may happen, but the goal was to penalize hospitals, and the laudable goal was to give patients better treatment.\r\n\u201cBut that\u2019s not what happened.\r\n\u201cThis is the problem, the Democrats wrote this into the law\u2014and then with the regulations that came out\u2014they did this in a way that really had no evidence that this policy would actually help patients and save money at the same time.\r\n\u201cIt turns out, and this is a study in the American Medical Association, a well-respected journal, their cardiology journal, that say the death rate actually went up after hospitals faced this new requirement.\r\n\u201cThe study was over 400 hospitals, 110,000 patients and the study found that an extra 5,400 people are dying every year \u2013 just among heart failure patients because of the way the federal government has chosen to penalize hospitals around the country when patients are re-admitted.\r\n\u201cThe Wall Street Journal had an editorial about it last week.\r\n\u201cThey concluded that if you were doing a drug trial, on a drug that you were working on inventing to improve the lives of people, and they had the same results like this with 5,400 people dying, they would have shut it down long ago.\u2019\r\n\u201cThere is a deadly, unintended consequence here of the Obama health care law.\r\n\u201cThe insurance mandate tax was supposed to keep premiums from rising, premiums have gone up anyway.\r\n\u201cAnother unintended consequence of the law.\r\n\u201cWe should repeal the entire law.\r\n\u201cUntil we can do that, we should do what we can to help the American people who are struggling to deal with this expensive insurance, and what I believe is an unfair tax and fine that they must pay if they don\u2019t buy the insurance because they can\u2019t afford it, because it\u2019s not a good deal for them, or it doesn\u2019t work for them or their family.  \u201cIt took away people\u2019s choice, and force them to buy expensive insurance that wasn't right for them.\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s time for the insurance mandate to go away.\r\n\u201cWe know it\u2019s a bad idea.\r\n\u201cWe need to give people relief from this terrible tax.\r\n\u201cThe people of Wyoming \u2013 and the people of this country \u2013 simply can\u2019t afford to wait any longer. It is time to repeal the mandate of the health care law.\u201d\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ContentRecord_id=93FA1E2E-A973-46EA-8267-917723B6D640"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9433398954570293, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}