Republicans said they would be willing to negotiate an extension to the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies at some point this year before massive premium price hikes go into effect for millions of Americans.
It’s now just days before the start of open enrollment, and Americans are being notified of cost increases on the health insurance marketplace.
But Republicans don’t sound closer to having that conversation at all.
“I don’t think November the first is the deadline for anything,” Sen. John Cornyn told NOTUS. “We just are not willing to hold the government hostage for having a discussion we’re invariably going to have. So we’ll work through it, but not until we reopen the government.”
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The ACA enhanced premium tax credits lower the price of health insurance premiums for people with incomes up to 400% of the poverty level. More than 22 million Americans who buy insurance through ACA’s marketplaces participate in the program that expires at the end of the year. Without an extension, health insurance costs would more than double, on average, for those currently receiving the benefit, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy think tank.
Democrats have made the subsidies the primary demand in their shutdown fight, though it’s largely Republican-led states, like Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Florida, that would feel the biggest effects if the tax credits expired at the end of the year.
“I think there are some who acknowledge that it’s something we’ve got to resolve, and others that are maybe not appreciating the full impact,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski told NOTUS of her Republican colleagues’ attitudes toward the future of the enhanced subsidies.
For now, several Republicans sounded as though they were viewing the impact in terms of political messaging.
Sen. John Hoeven, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that while he has continued to talk to Democrats on the appropriations committees, the upcoming open enrollment deadline doesn’t change anything for him, either. Increases to premium costs have already been announced, he said.
“That information’s already out,” Hoeven said. “Nov. 1 is when you can start, but they’ve already put the numbers out. Whatever point the Democrats wanted to make, they’ve long since made it. They should join us and vote to fund the government.”
Instead, Republicans have seized Nov. 1 as a key date for different major disruption in benefits: the day food assistance funding fails to go out to the states because of the shutdown.
Republicans in Congress, almost all of whom voted to cut $186 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through 2035, have now made the food assistance program their biggest rallying cry against Democrats.
“SNAP is the bigger issue, you’re talking about 42 million people suddenly losing access to food, that’s a much bigger issue,” Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said. “I know they’re concerned about the 19 million people, that their rates may go up there on that subsidized group. Forty-two million people losing access to food is the bigger issue.”
Some Republicans acknowledged that open enrollment could at the very least force them to answer for possible increases in health insurance costs.
“I think that the deadline and open enrollment creates a complicating factor for us, but it doesn’t by itself create any forcing mechanism,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said. “What I think creates a forcing mechanism for reopening the government is when EBT accounts and SNAP benefits, those sorts of things, become obvious to the people who need it the most.”
But the overarching message remains unchanged from September: They’ve still got time.
“The insurance companies, my understanding is that they’re calculating both with premiums or not,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said. “So I think, you know, there’s still time here, so we’ll just have to see what they come out with, and what the pressure is then built until next week.”
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