Americans will have to pay more for healthcare because Republicans repealed the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, according to President Donald Trump's former health secretary.
Tom Price, who was President Donald Trump's first head of the Department of Health and Human Services, said at the World Health Care Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that people looking to buy insurance on government-run marketplaces will have to pay higher prices because of the GOP tax law.
"There are many, and I'm one of them, who believes that that actually will harm the pool in the exchange market, because you'll likely have individuals who are younger and healthier not participating in that market, and consequently that drives up the cost for other folks within that market," Price said, according to The Washington Post.
Price, who was an outspoken opponent of the individual mandate before its repeal, resigned from the department in September after Politico reported he took two dozen taxpayer-funded private flights.
"The individual mandate is one of those things that is actually driving up the cost for the American people in terms of coverage," Price said last year on ABC's "This Week," according to Axios. "So, what we're trying to do is make it so that Obamacare is no longer harming the patients of this land — no longer driving up costs, no longer making it so that they've got coverage but no care."
Last November, the Congressional Budget Office projected 13 million fewer Americans would have healthcare coverage by 2027 because of the repeal of the individual mandate, and average premiums will increase by roughly 10 percent in the next decade.
"Those effects would occur mainly because healthier people would be less likely to obtain insurance and because, especially in the nongroup market, the resulting increases in premiums would cause more people to not purchase insurance," the CBO said at the time.