In response to the passage of Senate tax reform legislation which includes repeal of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, Andrew Dreyfus, President & CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, released the following statement:
"The individual mandate has been an essential underpinning of health reform access and affordability, since it assures a balanced risk pool in order to prevent premium increases. A shared responsibility model is the best way to create the largest possible pool of insured so that the financial risk of coverage can be spread among both healthy and sick individuals. This approach has worked with other types of insurance and it has worked in Massachusetts, which has the lowest uninsured rate in the nation. The individual mandate is an important component of the ACA. To simply repeal it without any thought to an alternative, in the context of the tax bill, is not sound policy." ... |