House GOP passes narrow health care package, letting key Obamacare subsidies expire
By Sarah Ferris, Tami Luhby, Ellis Kim, CNN
(CNN) — House Republicans on Wednesday approved a narrow package designed to lower health care costs for some Americans in the coming years – marking a win for leadership even as some of their own members complain it falls woefully short of tackling rising prices in 2026.
Speaker Mike Johnson and his team were aggressive in pushing their health care plan to the floor this week, vowing it will be the first step of a major GOP agenda on lowering costs next year.
They are specifically ignoring, however, the issue of the expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies that were passed during the pandemic to help people afford premium costs. Those tax credits will expire at the end of the month, spiking premiums for tens of millions of Americans next year.
The House GOP package, instead, would allow small businesses — as well as self-employed people — to band together across industries to buy coverage through association health plans in an effort to lower premiums. It would also, once again, provide federal funding for the cost-sharing subsidies that lower-income Obamacare enrollees receive to reduce their deductibles and out-of-pocket costs for care.
House Republicans would also require pharmacy benefit managers, which act as middlemen between drugmakers and insurers or employers, to provide employers with data on the price of drugs, the rebates they receive from manufacturers and other operations.
The House voted 216-211 to send the measure to the Senate, which is not expected to vote on it before lawmakers leave town for the holiday recess.
The last-minute health care push from GOP leaders comes at a fraught moment for the party: President Donald Trump is striving to show he is making progress to lower costs for everyday Americans. But his own members are attacking Johnson and other GOP leaders for ignoring the looming Obamacare subsidies cliff, which would raise costs for tens of millions of Americans starting in January.
If the enhanced subsidies lapse, enrollees will see their annual premium payments increase by 114% — or about $1,000 — on average in 2026, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group. Roughly 2 million more people are also expected to be uninsured next year if the subsidies end, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The more generous assistance was enacted in 2021 as part of a Biden administration Covid-19 relief package.
A group of GOP centrists have been pressuring Johnson for months to reverse course on the subsidies — pushing bipartisan efforts to extend the subsidies while adding “guardrails” to ensure the dollars are not misused.
But Johnson has only dug in. Those centrists then decided Wednesday to openly defy Johnson and potentially issue him a humiliating defeat in January by signing onto a Democratic effort to extend the subsidies for three years. That plan from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is detested by most Republicans because it includes no reforms.
But centrists insist they had no other options to keep the money flowing in January – and prevent millions from losing coverage altogether – after party leaders repeatedly blocked their attempts to get a floor vote on the compromise proposals.
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