Insurers pass on the ACA tax in premiums. Photo: Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Health insurance companies will have to pay $15.5 billion next year if the Affordable Care Act's tax on insurers resumes as planned, the IRS said in a notice on Tuesday.
The big picture: Insurers hate the tax because it eats into profits, and companies pass along the costs to consumers through higher premiums. The industry has a few months left to persuade lawmakers to delay or kill the tax.
The rise in coronavirus cases in certain parts of the U.S. is stunting confidence across the country, a crop of new reports show.
Driving the news: After stalling during the previous two-week period, overall economic sentiment declined for the first time in two months, according to the Economic Sentiment Index, a biweekly survey from data firm CivicScience and Hamilton Place Strategies (HPS).
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Republicans, win or lose next week, face a big — and growing — math problem.
The state of play: They're relying almost exclusively on a shrinking demographic (white men), living in shrinking areas (small, rural towns), creating a reliance on people with shrinking incomes (white workers without college degrees) to survive.