Health care premiums set to soar as GOP leaders see no expanded credits

House Speaker Mike Johnson Tuesday all but ruled out approving an extension of Obamacare health insurance premium subsidies before Congress ends its 2025 session later this week, virtually guaranteeing consumer costs for the policies will double next year.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Roseville, and a small group of other House Republicans are still hoping for a vote on an extension, but the speaker was not encouraging.

“We worked on it all the way through the weekend, in fact, and in the end … an agreement wasn’t made,” Johnson told reporters

Kiley, Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, and other GOP House members considered to have tough re-election fights have been pushing hard to extend the credits.

The subsidies were enacted in 2021, a Biden administration effort to ease the financial burdens imposed by a sinking Covid-era economy.

The credits expire at the end of this month, meaning Californians with policies purchased under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, face premium increases averaging an estimated 97% higher next year.

Republican leaders have been trying to undo Obamacare since it was enacted in 2010. The GOP is pushing legislation, due for a vote Wednesday, that includes several reforms aimed at lowering consumer costs.

The initiatives include more transparency for pharmacy benefit managers, who critics maintain help drive up drug costs; making it easier for small businesses and self-employed people to band together to get insurance and financial help for lower-income people so they can buy policies.

Republican leaders argued that the bill will hold down soaring health care costs. “For 15 years, the Unaffordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has done the opposite of what it promised,” maintained Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, a physician and chief sponsor of the bill.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a Republican health care plan that does not include the subsidies. Kiley and others are trying to amend that legislation.

They’ve been seeking to continue the subsidies for one to two years. Democratic leaders are pushing for a three-year extension.

The extension’s prospects look bleak and, according to Johnson, nearly impossible.

Johnson, speaking at a news conference, said that over the weekend, negotiations between extension supporters and GOP leaders were intense.

“Everybody was at the table in good faith, and I certainly appreciate the views and opinions of every member of this conference,” he said. Conservative Republicans are not only wary of Obamacare, but want any changes paid for by other initiatives.

Johnson talked about the vulnerable Republicans. Kiley and Valadao are in congressional districts whose lines were redrawn by California’s Proposition 50, lines that make the districts more Democrat-friendly.

Kiley’s district, which stretches from east of Sacramento across the state and down to Death Valley, will be carved up and pieces will go into six different districts.

“There’s about a dozen members in the conference that are in these swing districts who are fighting hard to make sure that they reduce costs for all of their constituents,” Johnson said.

“We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve and it just was not to be,” he said.

Later Tuesday, Kiley remained hopeful that some way would be found to get the subsidies continued. Lawmakers are still pitching ideas, ways to pay for the subsidies and different reforms to combat fraud and abuse.

Stay tuned, Kiley said, and remember, “It’s been a very up and down process.”

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