Senate Democrats will bring a bill to a vote next week to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits for three years, setting up a vote they say is the last chance to keep health insurance costs from jumping after Jan. 1.
The vote is planned for Thursday, Dec. 11.
“Republicans have one week to decide where they stand,” Schumer said.
The enhanced premium tax credits are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. Schumer and his colleagues said that if Congress does not act, premiums for marketplace coverage will rise sharply when new rates take effect.
“Premiums go up Jan. 1, period,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. He warned that higher bills would land “like a hammer blow to the American people” and that millions of Americans “will see their premiums double” if the credits lapse.
Welch said Senate Democrats currently have 47 votes for the bill and “need 13 more,” underscoring the gap they must close in the next week to pass a three-year extension in a chamber in which Republicans control the agenda.
“The people who are going to suffer are people who are represented by Democrats and by Republicans,” Welch said, noting that Schumer got Democrats together with a “concrete plan” but that they did not “have anything in response” from the GOP.
“It just doesn’t matter.”
Blunt Rochester called the situation a crisis and said she is “watching the clock” as families get notices about next year’s insurance costs.
“We have an immediate problem, an immediate crisis, an immediate cliff, and we need to take immediate action,” she said. “And that’s why we’re proposing the three-year time frame—to allow us to also work with our Republican colleagues to make the substantial changes that we need to make, to make us a healthier country, and to make sure that we have a health care system that’s working for all of us.”
When asked why Democrats are not putting forward a shorter or more tailored extension that some Republicans have floated, Schumer said GOP senators have not produced a concrete plan that can move.
“They couldn’t put pen to paper,” Welch said of informal talks.
“It was aspirational discussion, but it never got concrete.”
Schumer said Republicans could still offer changes, but that the only way to avoid higher January premiums is to pass the Democratic bill or another extension with a similar effect next week.
“This is the only solution to avoid the Jan. 1 cliff, plain and simple,” he said.
In the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) backed the Senate push and said Democrats there are united behind a similar approach. He pointed to a discharge petition for a three-year extension that he said has signatures from all 214 House Democrats and would need only four Republicans to force a vote.
Republicans said they are open to discussing an extension but want policy changes attached to it. Party leaders have called for adding income caps so higher earners no longer qualify for the enhanced help and for including “Hyde Amendment” restrictions that bar federal funds from paying for abortion coverage. They say those conditions are necessary if Democrats want Republican votes for any long-term deal.
The path in the House is also uncertain. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has not committed to holding a vote on whatever health care bill the Senate takes up, and Republican leaders there have said only that their conference is working on a proposal to make coverage more affordable, without offering a timeline. Senate Republicans have not yet said whether they will put forward their own bill.
Some Republicans have also pointed to the calendar. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) told reporters that they are “trying to come up with something that works within the confines of the [current] law ... so it can take effect right away.”
“That’s very much a consideration,” he said.
