Former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that he believed Obamacare’s employer mandate would eventually be repealed.
BenefitsPro.com flagged Gibbs’s comments, made during a speech at an employee benefits expo in Colorado Springs.
“I don’t think the employer mandate will go into effect,” he said. “It’s a small part of the law. I think it will be one of the first things to go.”
The Obama administration has already delayed the mandate for a year and softened it further last month. Other White House allies have told TPM that they would support repealing the mandate if it was paid for. RAND Corp, a non-profit think tank, estimated full repeal would cost $149 billion in federal revenue in the next 10 years.
RAND also estimated that a one-year delay of the mandate would result in 300,000 more uninsured Americans.
