Washington, DC – Ways and Means Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI) commented on today’s analysis released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimating that in 2016 more than half of the 3.9 million Americans who will be forced to pay the Democrats’ new tax for not having government-approved health insurance will have incomes that are low enough to qualify for premium subsidies. 

Furthermore, CBO estimates that in 2016, 3 million Americans with income less than 500 percent of the federal poverty level (currently $72,850 for a married couple) will pay roughly $2 billion in taxes as a result of the health care law’s individual mandate tax.  That works out to an average of roughly $666 in new taxes per person for the health care mandate alone.

“Not only does the health care law increase the price of insurance, it increases your tax bill,” said Camp.  “No wonder the IRS will need up to $10 billion and up to 16,500 agents, auditors and other employees to implement this bill.  The individual mandate tax will fall hardest on Americans who can least afford to pay it, many of whom were promised subsidies by the Democrats and who the President has promised would not pay higher taxes.  This is a bad law and we need to repeal it and replace it with a bill that not only lowers health insurance premiums but does so without raising taxes.”

NOTE: Camp authored the only health reform bill scored by CBO as reducing health care premiums across the board.  Camp’s legislation contained no tax increase, no Medicare cuts and reduced the federal deficit by implementing common sense lawsuit reform.

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