Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.) is renewing his push to repeal an ObamaCare tax on insurance companies that he says “drives up costs” across the board.
Boustany is joining Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on a bill to repeal the Health Insurance Tax, which he said hurts individuals and businesses by increasing premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
“American families and small businesses are on the brink of being crushed under the weight of the Health Insurance Tax,” Boustany said in a statement, adding that the tax threatens “hundreds of thousands of lost jobs over the next decade.”
The tax is an important revenue source for the Affordable Care Act, amounting to $8 billion in 2014 and rising to $14.3 billion by 2018, though the Congressional Budget Office has warned it would be “largely passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums.”
Boustany, who spent 30 years as a cardiovascular surgeon, is a longtime opponent of ObamaCare and aggressively fought the law as chairman of the House Ways and Means panel’s Oversight Subcommittee.