Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) wants the Affordable Care Act to be an election issue next year. He’s pushing for a delay in the individual enrollment mandate, which has a March 31st deadline and carries tax penalties for not signing up for health insurance.
Coats thinks the more exposure Americans have to the law, the less they like it.
“The American people now have had a much different look at this as they did in 2012 or 2010,” he says. “Let’s go forward with this delay and give them another chance to go to the polls next November and say, ‘OK, yeah, we want to go forward with Obamacare,’ or ‘We like the alternative. We think that’s better.’”
Several Democratic senators are asking the president to support a delay in the penalties as well. Coats says the Republicans can come up with a better alternative that’s more private-sector oriented.
“We (Republicans) can certainly incorporate in an alternative plan the ability for people to get insurance who haven’t been able to get insurance before,” Coats says. “We’ve seen that through different state plans, risk pools, putting more ability of people to form groups that work across stateliness to deal with the medical malpractice issue and a whole number of other initiatives.”
Coats is traveling around Indiana this week to push for a delay and get feedback on his ideas for a healthcare law.