President Trump and congressional Republicans are riding high into the New Year with a legislative victory under their belt: tax reform. The passage of this tax package was both necessary and possible only because the GOP failed at health reform first.

The package did include a body blow to the Affordable Care Act: It eliminated the tax penalty associated with the law’s individual mandate, gutting the requirement to buy government-approved health insurance. This is an important move: It effectively ends an unpopular penalty that disproportionately burdened low-income Americans.