The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate for health insurance would be repealed, and Americans who paid penalties for not having insurance coverage would be refunded, under legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) on Friday.
The Repeal and Refund Act would return more than $5 billion in individual mandate penalties that were collected from taxpayers in 2014 and 2015 alone.
In Daines’ home state of Montana, $14.34 million that nearly 30,000 Montanans paid for failing to have health insurance would be repaid. The majority of those Montana residents who paid the fines earn less than $50,000 per year, Daines said.
“Families that can’t afford health insurance because of Obamacare were forced to pay a costly fine that only added insult to injury,” Daines said.
The senator, citing IRS data, said the amount of tax penalties paid by individuals making less than $50,000 rose to $1.8 billion in 2015 from $973 million in 2014. During that period, the tax burden also increased to $325 in 2015 from $95 in 2014.
“This individual mandate, this poverty tax, is immoral and it’s a tax on our freedom which needs to be repealed immediately. The poverty tax must be paid back to the hardworking folks who paid them,” he said.
In July, Daines took to the Senate floor to recount the stories of Montanans who couldn’t afford to purchase insurance and were then forced to pay the individual mandate penalty in calling for its repeal.
“[Obamacare] took a program designed to care for the most vulnerable in our society and made it unsustainable. Montanans deserve better than poverty taxes, increasing premiums, and a shrinking market,” Daines said in July.