House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) said that Democrats’ pandemic-era policies subsidize wealthy Americans and fill the coffers of big insurances companies, while Republican healthcare reforms included in the Big Beautiful Bill lower prices.
Smith said in a statement on Monday:
Republican health care reforms will reduce prices and make care more affordable and accessible for working families. This is a stark contrast to how Democrats used emergency spending to subsidize the wealthy and fill the pockets of big insurance companies. Their approach failed to help Americans in need or to address the underlying challenges in our health care system. The actual problems leading to higher premiums are not the expiration of temporary Biden Covid-era tax credits to big insurance companies, but issues Democrats have failed time and again to confront, like less choice and competition, health system consolidation, and higher provider costs.
Smith released his statement after Democrats shut down the government due to the looming expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, subsidies.
The enhanced subsidies were authorized through the Biden-era $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid bill, the American Rescue Plan, and then continued through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.
Democrats hope to extend these subsidies to help cover the rising cost of health insurance premiums, even though the program was meant to serve as a temporary relief during the coronavirus pandemic.
As the Ways and Means Committee noted in a press release, the wealthiest of Americans could benefit from these subsidies:
- With no income cap, expanded PTCs [premium tax credits] benefit wealthy enrollees in high-cost areas.
- A family of four in Prescott, AZ making $600,000 annually qualifies.
- A married couple in West Virginia making $580,000 annually qualifies.
- A single individual in Vermont making $180,000 annually qualifies.
Smith is not the only one to notice the phenomenon.
Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, said, “What the enhanced subsidies do is they subsidize people making from $129,000 all the way up to $600,000 per year. And so these are really the Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy.”
The Ways and Means Committee said that extending the “Biden COVID Credits” amounts to essentially a “$400 billion giveaway to insurance companies — not tax relief for American families.”
“The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable,” the Washington Post admitted.
“Republicans are putting Americans first by giving direct assistance to patients through expanded financial tools like Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and supporting health care providers, such as through the historic $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program included as part of the working families tax cuts – not bailouts to large health insurers,” the committee noted in its press release.
On the other side of the healthcare debate, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that Republican reforms in the Big Beautiful Bill would lower health insurance premiums.
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