America's Talking - U.S. House passes GOP health care bill, sends to Senate before leaving for holidays

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

(The Center Square) – The U.S. House passed the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act in a party line, 216-211, vote Wednesday, sending the bill to its likely demise in the Senate. The bill, which will almost certainly fail to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, is Republicans’ alternative to extending enhancements to the Obamacare Premium Tax Credit. Congress temporarily expanded the PTC during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its reversion to original pre-pandemic levels will partially contribute to rising premiums in 2026. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_8932223d-1b7a-4a31-b7c2-34c9b7ca3ce5.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McCaleb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. With Obamacare premium tax credits that were enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic set to expire at the end of the year, Republicans in the House passed an alternative replacement this week on a party-line vote. The lower health care premiums for All-Americans Act is likely doomed in the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority but need a handful of Democrats to jump on board to get to, to the 60-vote threshold. Shorty meeting today to discuss this is Therese Boudreau, congressional reporter for the Center Square.

Tres, tell us about the measure and its prospects in the Senate. Yeah, so this is kind of a last-minute measure from Republicans, the lower health care premiums for All-Americans Act. And so it's not very all-encompassing, to be honest. There's like about five key reforms that we've reported on at the Center Square. One of the big ones is that it finally opens up funding for cost-sharing reductions, which is the CSR as part of the, was originally part of the Obamacare, original Affordable Care Act, but a judge ruled that there weren't official appropriations for it so the money couldn't actually go out and lower people's premium. So it would under this. But essentially, it was kind of just a bunch of ideas that Republicans threw together and put into a bill and said, hey, let's, you know, let's do this instead of extending the enhanced Obamacare premium tax credits. And so no Democrats voted for it. And it's going to most likely fail in the Senate because, as you said, there's a 60 vote threshold that they need to break.

And there's no way they're going to do that because they have only 53 Republicans there. But so this has been going on for quite a while, as I'm sure many people know if they've been keeping up with the news at all, because the Obamacare enhanced Obama premium tax credits are the entire reason why Democrats say at least that they shut down the government months ago, that 43 day long government shut down the record was because these credits were expiring at the end of the year. So basically the Obamacare premium tax credit is a subsidy. It goes to insurance companies. And it was, it Originally, it was part of the, you know, original ACA. And then during COVID-19, Democrats in Congress enhanced it, extended it, expanded it to, you know, so now that, now there are some people with these tax credits who are on zero dollar premium plans. There are people who are making, you know, 400 times the federal poverty line who are receiving it, things like that. And then there also, there's a government accountability office report that showed that, um, a lot of this because the enhancements incentivized insurance companies and brokers to have as many people on, you know, receiving needs as possible that there's some fraud, at least a lot

of fraud risk that they found and some confirmed instances of fraud. We also reported on that at the Center Square. So essentially, all this is to say that Republicans, except for a few who wanted to kind of make it compromise, these rank and file ones, Republican leaders at least in large majority did not want to extend these. And so a vote on those failed in the Senate last week. House Speaker Mike Johnson did not allow Democrats to bring a similar extension vote, you know, a three-year extension of these in the House. So they're going to revert to pre-pandemic levels, which will partially contribute to millions of Americans premiums rising in 26. And Congress has just left, and it doesn't really seem like they have a plan, given that

the only one on the table of Republicans is likely not going to pass the Senate. So that's where we're at right now. Looking at your reporting this week, Therese, extending the Obamacare enhanced tax credits would cost an estimated $350 billion over 10 years, while the Republicans bill would reduce the federal deficit by about $35 billion by 2035. That's according to the nonpartisan congressional budget office. That's essentially the reason why Republicans did not want to extend the Obamacare enhanced tax credits because of its overall cost. Is that correct? Yes, partially. And it is worth noting that Democrats have essentially at this point, they had given up on a 10-year extension, and they said, okay, just three years. But that, even just three years, is $83 billion added to the

deficit. But yes, the cost was definitely a big factor for a lot of Republicans. But another thing was, as I mentioned, the fraud that, or at least the very, very, very high risk of fraud, the lack of guardrails, the ability for the basically fake enrollees at the government accountability office tested in the program to just receive the subsidies and receive insurance without providing any documentation that was requested, that 18 of the 20 that the GAO submitted, you know, these fake applicants because they were testing to see how much fraud was in there, 18 of the 20, as of September, are still receiving health insurance, subsidized health insurance, and roughly $10,000, equaling up to about $10,000 a month.

So that was kind of the bombshell report that a lot of Republicans grab. abd on to saying, see, look, this is why we haven't been, you know, agreeing to an extension, you know, for Democrats because these just, they're supercharged with fraud and they cost a lot. And there was also, there are definitely some Republicans who are concerned about the fact that the credits can be applied to plans that cover abortions. So it's, you know, kind of indirect application that a lot of them are concerned about. So, again, so it's, as you can see, it's something that it's very, would be very difficult Republicans to swallow and a lot of them just don't want to and have decided not to. And so now you have, you know, the American people, a lot of them are wondering what am I going to do next year. It is also worth noting on, as you're saying with the cost, that these enhanced premium tax credits are current law, right, or current policy, I should say. So they're currently still happening, but they're going to expire. And under the logic that Republicans used for their

one big, beautiful bill, that means that extending tax credits that are still in place shouldn't cost anything. That's the reasoning that they used to extend the large bulk of a tax credits in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. So it is interesting to see that, you know, and lawmakers on on all sides do this, as we all know, is that they'll, they'll kind of change their arguments when it's something that they don't want. So that's also very interesting, is that, okay, they're correct that, you know, according to the Congressional Budget Office and other people that, yes, these a three-year extension of the enhanced Obamacare tax credits would cost $83 billion over the next three years. But that kind of calculation, that kind of accounting,

that traditional accounting that's been used is something that a lot of Republicans kind of just did away with this past June and July in order to make other tax credits permanent that they did like. So as you can see, it is a very thorny issue, not just because health care is always a thorny issue and it's something that a lot of people are dissatisfied with in the U.S., but just because this particular issue, you know, these credits in particular are just there are so many things that different people can find issue. with. So that's, again, since the beginning of the shutdown, the focus has been on these enhanced premium tax credits. So that's kind of been where we're at at the moment. Gerez, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.