“The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act is going to accomplish exactly what the title says,” Johnson said at a news conference Tuesday. “If it becomes law, premiums will decrease, access will increase, and every American will have more options and flexibility to choose the coverage that works best for them.”
The proposal includes five key reforms, Johnson said. In addition to so-called cost-sharing reduction payments that would provide discounts to some low-income people and expanding access to association health plans that allow small businesses and the self-employed to group together to purchase health coverage, Johnson said the bill also plans changes designed to control prescription drug costs.
“This is the greatest hits of Republican health care solutions from 2007,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Tuesday. “These are all old, recycled policies that never became law.”
Aguilar continued to advocate for an extension of the ACA enhanced tax credits that were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and are set to expire Dec. 31.
Before House Republicans unveiled their latest bill, the nonpartisan health policy research organization KFF estimated that, if the tax credits are not extended, out-of-pocket premium costs would rise an average of 114%, or $1,016 annually, for the 24 million people who have received the subsidies.
Extending the subsidies was the biggest sticking point in the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history this fall. Democrats conditioned their support for a Republican short-term funding patch on a continuation of the credits an effort that was repeatedly blocked by Republicans in both the Senate and the House.
Last week, the Senate rejected a standalone bill introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to extend the ACA credits for three years.
On Tuesday, Johnson reiterated what he has long said about an ACA credit extension: “It’s just further subsidizing the system that benefits insurance companies.”
Democrats, he said, are “not trying to solve the cost problem.”
Schumer’s Lower Health Care Costs Act would have added $83 billion to the federal deficit, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Last week, the Senate GOP countered Schumer’s bill with a proposal to provide $1,000 annual payments to new health savings accounts for adult enrollees, or $1,500 for those ages 50 to 64, but it failed to advance.
President Donald Trump has also proposed providing Americans with stipends to help buy insurance as an alternative to extending the subsidies.
“I want to see the billions of dollars go to people, not to the insurance companies,” he said late Friday during an event at the White House. “And I want to see the people go out and buy themselves great health care.”
On Tuesday, Johnson said the idea of setting up HSAs as an alternative to the premium tax credit “is very much on the table” either as part of a reconciliation package or a standalone measure that the House could take up next year.
