Enhanced ACA subsidies to expire as talks in Congress stall – NPR

Politics

How the long-running Obamacare fight came to thwart enhanced subsidies in Congress

Updated December 17, 202512:10 PM ET, Heard on Morning Edition

By Sam Gringlas 3-Minute Listen Transcript

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., meets with reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday as Republicans confront internal divisions over how to to address growing health care costs.

This story was adapted from an article that first published on Nov. 5, 2025.

With only two days to go before a scheduled holiday recess, it is looking increasingly likely that members of Congress will leave Washington without extending Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies.

The enhanced subsidies for ACA marketplace plans will expire at the end of the year, spiking premiums for millions of Americans. Many are seeing the price tag of their plans double or triple.

The deadline to sign up for plans on the ACA exchange was Monday, and some subscribers say they will forgo health insurance because they can no longer afford the premiums without the subsidies.

So far, that has not spurred Congress to coalesce around a plan to address health care costs.

The Affordable Care Act may be more popular than ever. Polls show support from voters across the political spectrum for extending the enhanced subsidies, which were first passed in 2021.

But 15 years since the ACA became law, the debate over health care has endured in Congress — and seems poised to spill into 2026, when every House seat and a third of the Senate is on the ballot.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Enhanced ACA subsidies to expire as talks in Congress stall : NPR

Republicans have a mess on their hands over health care subsidies – Axios

Axios, 24 hours ago – Politics & Policy

Republicans have a mess on their hands over health care subsidies – By Stef W. Kight,Kate Santaliz, and Hans Nichols

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are both considering votes on GOP health care priorities next week — if they can figure out what those priorities are.

Why it matters: Democrats are unified in their demand for a three-year extension of Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies, which expire Dec. 31. Republicans are still divided and debating their counter offers.

• Johnson (R-La.) has said he hopes to reveal a House GOP health care package early next week, though some sources are skeptical that will happen.
• Thune (R-S.D.) has promised Democrats a vote on their health care bill next week. But his conference is still in the idea stage on their counters, which are more likely to come as amendment or unanimous consent votes rather than a single broader GOP package.

Between the lines: Don’t expect any health care package to pass next week.

• The real question is whether the voting exercise in the Senate and maybe the House fuels ongoing bipartisan dealmaking — or hampers it.

Zoom in: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is circulating a plan that would extend the expiring subsidies — but with a $200,000 income cap and no zero-dollar premium packages, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports.

• Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) told Axios he hopes a GOP package will include moving the expiring subsidies into health care savings accounts and adding his bipartisan bill requiring more price transparency.
• Republicans are also again eyeing changes known as cost-sharing reductions, aimed at lowering premiums, but could cut subsidies for some enrollees.
• Multiple senators described the conversations as broad and fluid, with no real consensus this week on any one, single GOP package. And Hyde protections continue to be a sore spot, with some Republicans demanding increased assurances that subsidies aren’t used for abortions.

In the House, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) has been holding “listening sessions” with committee leaders and rank-and-file Republicans for weeks to find a consensus GOP plan.

• A bipartisan group of 35 centrist lawmakers , led by Reps. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) and Josh Gottheimer, unveiled a two-year extension of the ACA subsidies Thursday, but it doesn’t have buy in from leadership.
• “We’re going to come up with something that I think even people like Jen would support,” Scalise said Thursday.

• House GOP leaders have also discussed proposals that would not extend the enhanced subsidies, but instead expand Association Health Plans, where employers band together to purchase health coverage for workers.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Republicans have a mess on their hands over health care subsidies

#ACA #AffordableCareAct #Axios #Deadline #December312025 #GOP #healthCare #HealthSubsidies #HouseSpeakerMikeJohnson #JohnThune #MikeJohnson #RepublicanParty #Republicans #SenatorJohnThune #SenatorSusanCollins #SteveScalise #SubsidiesInJeopardy #USHouse #USSenate

Trump to push new Republican plan on ACA subsidies – Axios

Newsletters, Axios Pro, Axios Live, The Axios Show, More in Health, Axios

14 hours ago – Health

Trump to push new Republican plan on Obamacare subsidies

• By Adriel Bettelheim, and Peter Sullivan, and Maya Goldman

President Trump as soon as this week is due to outline a new initiative that calls for a short-term extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies in exchange for new eligibility limits and other changes.

Why it matters: Mounting concern about medical costs and the looming expiration of enhanced ACA tax credits could amp up affordability concerns and give Democrats a potent weapon heading into an election year.

• Democrats made ACA financial assistance a centerpiece of the recent government shutdown fight.

What we’re hearing: Trump plans to propose a framework that would address spiking premiums by extending for two years the enhanced ACA tax credits, which are due to expire at the end of the year, according to sources familiar, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the talks.

• It would put an income limit on who’s eligible for the tax credits and require recipients to make a minimum premium payment, eliminating $0 premium plans that Republicans say fuel fraud.
• The plan also would encourage people to buy lower-premium options on the ACA exchange.
• For individuals who downgrade their coverage, the difference in costs would be distributed to an health savings account provided with taxpayer dollars.

Still unresolved in the larger battle over the subsidies is whether there would be new prohibitions on using any financial assistance for elective abortions.

• Adding Hyde Amendment language to any deal would be highly controversial, with Democrats insisting there’s already a mechanism to segregate taxpayer funds so they’re not used to pay for the procedure.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday and teased that an announcement on health care costs would come this week.

Context: Trump recently has been adamant about not signing a straightforward extension of ACA subsidies, saying the money should be directed away from insurance companies and sent directly to consumers to shop for health services.

• Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) have proposed ACA subsidy alternatives in recent weeks that would use tax-privileged savings accounts.

The White House and Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.

• MS NOW was the first to report the existence of the new Trump plan.

Go deeper: Trump admin pushes back on rising health care costs

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump to push new Republican plan on ACA subsidies

#aca #affordableCareAct #axios #healthCare #healthSubsidies #hydeAmendment #msNow #obamacare #republicanPlan #taxCredits #trump

Republicans Will Never Find a Health Care Replacement – The American Prospect

Health and Social Policy

Republicans Will Never Find a Health Care Replacement

The GOP is too wedded to free markets and scornful of the welfare state to ever make anything in health care work.

by Ryan Cooper, November 18, 2025

Republicans, for once, are sounding downright squeamish about onrushing massive cuts to Obamacare subsidies, with premiums on the exchanges expected to more than double on average starting next year. GOP House committee chairs are reportedly having some “brainstorming sessions” about what to do, and House Speaker Mike Johnson claims that they will “be rolling out some of those ideas” at some point.

So far, the genius idea in the lead is Trump’s pitch to reroute subsidies from health insurance companies to the American people, so they can buy health care. (House Republicans have already filed a bill that looks like this.) When asked whether people wouldn’t then just use that money to buy health insurance, Trump replied, “Ahh … some may. I mean, they’ll be negotiating prices.” Congratulations, folks, you now get to be your own private dealmaker with the health care system, and with your purchasing power and risk pool of one household, I’m sure you’ll get the best price!

More from Ryan Cooper

The stupidity is the point. For decades now, the Republican Party has been dedicated to the proposition that rich people are too highly taxed and the working and middle classes get too many benefits from the government. With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, they have finally caught the car. Medicaid and Obamacare have been slashed to free up budget headroom for tax cuts heavily slanted to the wealthy. Republicans don’t have a “health care plan” per se because this is their plan: to take your health care funding and give it to Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the rest of the fascist billionaire class.

American conservatism is a strange political beast. Like all conservatisms across the world, it stands in defense of hierarchy and privilege, but it is welded clumsily to 19th-century orthodox capitalism. By this view, all income should come from working or owning property, and all goods and services should be obtained through the market. It would be unjust for anyone to receive a welfare benefit from the government, because they did not work to earn it. This is a philosophical problem for conservatism, as George Scialabba writes, because capitalism regularly and wildly disrupts the established social order as technologies and businesses evolve. (For the record, this view is also very stupid.)

But it’s a much more practical problem for a Republican trying to write a health care policy. Health insurance is straightforwardly impossible to square with capitalist morality for reasons a child can understand. Most obviously, people routinely get very sick or injured through no fault of their own, and require care that is far more expensive than they can afford out of pocket. Sometimes people have chronic conditions that cost many multiples of what they could ever possibly earn. Therefore, unlike the market for car or home insurance, where each person is charged exactly what they are statistically expected to claim (plus a margin of profit), any functioning health insurance scheme must have systematic transfers from the young and healthy to the elderly and sick.

With a pure market approach, only the very rich will be able to get all the health care they need. Even people making well into six figures will not be able to afford elaborate surgery or cutting-edge therapies out of pocket. The poor—or really anyone living paycheck to paycheck—will not get health care at all. Before Obamacare, that was the reality for many, with the only “insurance” available on the market being de facto worthless if you ever actually needed it.

This is what led early socialists and social democrats to advocate for national health insurance, run by the government. If the market is a fundamentally stupid way to pay for medical treatment, then throw everyone onto the same program, and fund it out of taxes. That way, the risk pool and the funding base will be as large as possible, people will be charged based on their ability to pay, and all citizens will be permanently insured. And historically, the fact that both the elderly and the poor were largely uninsured up through the early 1960s was a major motivation for the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.

Republicans have hated Medicare and Medicaid since the moment they were proposed, because they’re welfare programs. Ronald Reagan got his start in politics with an unhinged mini-documentary claiming Medicare would lead to a totalitarian dictatorship. Historically, Medicare has been too politically secure to touch—at least for now—but Republicans finally took a trillion-dollar bite out of Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Editor’s Note: Featured top image by WP AI.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Republicans Will Never Find a Health Care Replacement – The American Prospect

#aca #gop #healthCare #healthSubsidies #houseSpeaker #medicaid #medicare #mikeJohnson #noHealthCareReplacement #obamacare #republicans #ryanCooper #theAmericanProspect #welfarePrograms

The Government Shutdown at Day 40: Where are we and how did we get here? – GovTrack.us

The Government Shutdown at Day 40: Where are we and how did we get here?

Get Analysis and Commentary Updates In Your Inbox!

Sign up (it’s free!) to get posts like this straight to your inbox. You’ll be able to choose posts from these categories:

Analysis and Commentary   –   Legislative Recap   –   Legislative Preview   –   The White House   –   News About GovTrack   –   Using GovTrack Tips

Nov. 9, 2025 · by Joshua Tauberer

On October 1 funding for many federal government programs expired, and 40 days later Congress still has not reached an agreement on how to proceed. This has never happened before for so long.

What the shutdown means

About half of federal government employees are still working, including federal police like ICE, TSA, and air traffic controllers, the military, and staff deemed essential throughout the government. But those workers won’t get paid until the shutdown ends, and it’s legally dubious that many should be working at all. Payments out of a contingency fund for SNAP, the food assistance program, are only covering part of SNAP’s benefits and recent payments may be clawed back (the Supreme Court also ruled on it). That’s all because the Constitution requires that federal dollars are only spent when a law is enacted to authorize it, and the last laws authorizing all this spending expired on September 30.

What each side wants

To end the shutdown, Republicans must find at least 8 Democrats in the Senate to agree on an “appropriations” bill for either short-term funding (called a “continuing resolution”) or year-long funding.

Republicans proposed to continue Trump-level funding until November 21, which would include the major increase in spending on immigration enforcement, major cuts to foreign aid, student loans, and food and medical benefits for the poor, and workforce reductions throughout much of the federal government that Republicans enacted during the year. The time until November 21 was to be used to negotiate full-year appropriations bills (which should have already been enacted before the fiscal year ended, ideally).

Democrats have said that they would agree to that with 1) an extension to expiring health insurance subsidies for middle-class families and 2) a guarantee that Republicans won’t break the deal in the middle of the fiscal year (again). More on all that below.

Senate Republicans offered to hold a vote on extending the subsidies, but they didn’t offer to vote for it. Democrats didn’t accept the symbolic offer, but negotiations in the Senate continue. House Republicans in any case said they would not negotiate until the shutdown ended. (Democrats didn’t ask for funding for illegal immigrants, contrary to lies from the other side.)

Republicans expected Democrats to concede rather than be blamed in the public eye for the shutdown. Neither happened.

Lights on, lights off in Congress

The shutdown doesn’t prevent Congress from being in session, and since the shutdown began the Senate has been working: The Senate passed a bipartisan full-year defense spending bill, passed bills to end Trump tariffs and reverse Biden-era regulations, confirmed a handful of Trump nominations for federal judges, agency leaders, and military positions, and voted several times on (failed) proposals to end the shutdown. And Senate leaders from both parties have been negotiating an end to the shutdown.

The House of Representatives, on the other hand, has had the lights off. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent House Republicans home a week before the shutdown began until Democrats accede to the Republican proposal. Rather than actually being in recess, every few days a token representative gavels the chamber in and then a few minutes later gavels it out as if there is nothing to do. Most representatives are not in D.C., nor holding town halls in their districts, or apparently doing any work at all.

With the chamber technically in session, the Constitution would like a word: Johnson has refused to seat a representative elected in September. It’s unprecedented, and it’s to avoid a vote on an issue that would embarrass the President: Seating Rep.-elect Grijalva could trigger a vote on releasing DOJ’s Epstein files. (This is the second time the Speaker has kept the House out of session to avoid the Epstein issue.)

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Government Shutdown at Day 40: Where are we and how did we get here? – GovTrack.us

#AmericansHealth #FederalGovernmentShutdown #GovernmentShutdown #GovTrack #GovTrackUs #HealthSubsidies #HowDidWeGetHere #Trump #USCongress #USHouseOfRepresentatives #USSenate #WhereAreWe

When health insurance subsidies end, who will be affected by higher prices? – The Washington Post

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Politics Donald Trump The Fix The Briefs Polling Democracy in America Elections

Who will lose out when ACA health insurance subsidies expire?

Here’s a look at who could be affected by the end of the Affordable Care Act credits and how much prices could change.

Today at 6:05 a.m. EDT, 8 min

By Alyssa Fowers

Some 22 million Americans are set to lose health insurance subsidies by the end of the year. Who are they, and what will happen if the subsidies are allowed to expire?

These subsidies, known as enhanced premium tax credits, lower costs for people who buy their health insurance through Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces (sometimes called Obamacare). They are at the heart of a weeks-long standoff that has shuttered the federal government since October 1. About 80 percent of the people who benefit from them live in states that Donald Trump won in the 2024 presidential election. Many have no idea that their health insurance costs are on track to go up.

Who benefits from the tax credit?

Almost everyone who got their health insurance through an ACA marketplace in 2025 received the enhanced premium tax credit, so describing the people who have ACA plans is a good way to get a sense of the people who get the credit.

The typical person with an ACA plan is an adult in their mid-40s with an income between 100 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $21,000 to $42,000 for a family of two.

Lower-income people with ACA plans will return to the lower subsidy levels from the early years of the ACA if the enhanced credits expire. A smaller group withhigher incomes will become responsible for the full cost of their premiums.

Source: 2025 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement

Nearly half of the adults on ACA marketplace plans are self-employed, small-business owners or small-business employees, according to an analysis from KFF, an independent health policy research organization. While most Americans get their health insurance through their employer, those who work for small businesses (or themselves) often have to rely on the exchange.

“The Affordable Care Act is specifically designed to fill that gap,” said Jessica Banthin, a senior fellow in the health policy division of the Urban Institute, a think tank.Advertisement

Marketplace coverage is especially common among some occupations: At least a quarter of chiropractors, musicians, real estate brokers, farmers, dentists and manicurists currently benefit from the tax credit.

Not everyone who gets their health insurance through a marketplace is employed. A Washington Post analysis found that about 9 percent are retired people who may not yet be eligible for Medicare and that 6 percent are students. However, only people with an income are eligible for the enhanced premium tax credit.

Where do people use the credit?

Democrats have made extending the enhanced credits their main demand to reopen the government. That extension will mostly benefit people living in states where Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: When health insurance subsidies end, who will be affected by higher prices? – The Washington Post

#2025 #ACA #ACAMarketplace #AffordableCareAct #America #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #HealthInsurance #HealthSubsidies #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Obama #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration