When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, one key component of the landmark healthcare law was the “individual mandate.” The individual mandate required almost all Americans to have health insurance coverage. If you didn’t get covered? Well, then you paid a penalty fee.
Republican lawmakers took issue with the individual mandate from the beginning, though. After a legal challenge was brought against that component of Obamacare, the Supreme Court ruled that the mandate was constitutional in 2012. However, in December 2017, the GOP-led Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed into law by President Trump. This eliminated the individual mandate’s penalty fees throughout most of the United States. Per the new law, the individual mandate as we knew it was no longer in effect as of January 1, 2019.