{"id":194411,"date":"2025-12-21T23:41:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T23:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/congress-leaves-town-until-2026-with-no-health-care-deal-forcing-premium-hikes-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T23:41:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T23:41:18","slug":"congress-leaves-town-until-2026-with-no-health-care-deal-forcing-premium-hikes-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/congress-leaves-town-until-2026-with-no-health-care-deal-forcing-premium-hikes-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress leaves town until 2026 with no health care deal, forcing premium hikes – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WASHINGTON \u2014 The Republican-led House and Senate adjourned Thursday until the new year with no solution on expiring health care subsidies<\/a> under the Affordable Care Act, meaning insurance premiums for about 22 million Americans<\/a> will rise next month.
But despite opposition from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., some lawmakers in both parties hope there\u2019s still a path to act in 2026.
And if that fails, Democrats say they\u2019re determined to wield the issue to impose maximum political pain on Republicans in next year\u2019s midterm elections.
\u201cThey are absolutely screwing over millions of people, including my constituents, which pisses me off,\u201d said Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., who represents a competitive district in the Hudson Valley. \u201cIt\u2019s just pathetic. The last time there was a major national Republican effort to repeal the ACA, we had an overwhelming wave<\/a> where they got absolutely wiped out, and I think that\u2019s likely what will happen here again.\u201d
Before the House left town, four swing-district Republicans made a late scramble to revive the issue, successfully teaming up with Democrats on a \u201cdischarge petition\u201d to force a vote<\/a> on a three-year extension of Affordable Care Act funds. That vote is expected in the week of Jan. 5 when the House returns to session.
Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan, Ryan Mackenzie, all of Pennsylvania, as well as Mike Lawler of New York, joined 214 Democratic signatories to end-run Johnson, who has called for letting the enhanced subsidies expire.
\u201cI do believe if the bill comes to the floor, not only will it pass, but it\u2019ll give the Senate the ability to come back with a bipartisan compromise and actually get something passed into law,\u201d Lawler said Wednesday on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet The Press Now.\u201d
GOP leaders say they want to end the Covid-era funds, which were first passed by Democrats in 2021 on a party-line basis. Many Republicans want the money to elapse on schedule, but others say they’re open to a temporary extension if paired with limitations or a phase-out.
House and Senate Republicans offered competing bills with a collection of conservative ideas in each chamber, neither of which would restore or replace the ACA funds. House Republicans passed their proposal on Wednesday, but it is unlikely to become law.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., said Republicans in swing districts are now realizing the political perils of inaction.
\u201cI was literally in Mr. Bresnahan\u2019s district on Saturday at a town hall attended by more than 200 people,\u201d she said. \u201cThey all know that he went against them with the \u2018big, beautiful bill\u2019 vote on the Medicaid cuts. And so they got the message. They\u2019re in trouble.\u201d
Numerous Republican senators told NBC News that the House bill is dead on arrival across the Capitol \u2014 including some who favor an ACA funding extension at least on a short-term basis.
\u201cThere\u2019s no way it\u2019s going to sail through,\u201d said retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., an early proponent of extending the funding who opposes doing so for a full three years absent reforms. \u201cI would expect the vote count if it were just purely this wouldn\u2019t be probably the same as it was last week.\u201d
The Senate voted down<\/a> the three-year ACA funding extension last Thursday on a vote of 51-48, with four Republicans joining Democrats \u2014 far short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.
Even centrist Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who has long broken with her party on the ACA, declined to endorse the House bill that\u2019s headed to a vote, even if it were to pass the chamber.
\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is to put together a bipartisan bill that would have reforms plus a two-year extension,\u201d Collins told NBC News. \u201cThat is the best approach, in my opinion, and we\u2019re making good progress.\u201d
She said House passage of the bill would help \u201ckeep momentum going,\u201d but added: \u201cI think we need a bill that also has some reforms, such as an income cap, to just give you an example.\u201d
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also said the House bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, but that it could be the vehicle for a deal between the two parties in the upper chamber.
\u201cIt\u2019s too late to avoid the shock factor, but it\u2019s not too late to do something about it,\u201d Murkowski said. \u201cAnd so I refuse to be in the camp that says, well, you just have to give it up then.\u201d
Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., said it\u2019ll be \u201ctough\u201d for his constituents if the ACA funds expire with no off-ramp or replacement.
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to give people an exit ramp. My proposal was: do 90% now, 60% in a year, 30% in the year, and then it wouldn\u2019t be too easy, too difficult to step away from it,\u201d Justice said.
He said his fellow Republicans need to appreciate the financial pain that Americans would feel if the money simply dries up.
\u201cThey better. Honest to God, they better,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they don\u2019t, they\u2019re living in a cave.\u201d
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., another proponent of some kind of ACA funding extension, said one major problem with a bipartisan deal is the dispute over \u201cHyde\u201d language, referring to the law that prohibits federal funding for abortions. Republicans want to beef up abortion restrictions tied to the Obamacare money, which Democrats say is a nonstarter.
\u201cThere\u2019s people working on it,\u201d Rounds said, while adding that he\u2019s not sure if they\u2019ll find a way to resolve the issue.
Thune demurred on what the Senate would do if the House\u2019s three-year funding bill passes.
\u201cWe\u2019ll cross that bridge when we come to it,\u201d he said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., indicated it might already be too late, saying that after Jan. 1, when higher premiums kick in, it will be \u201cvery hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube.\u201d
Meanwhile, Democrats are indicating that they won\u2019t seek to tie ACA funding to the Jan. 30 deadline to fund the government. They used that tactic in the fall and it led to a record 43-day shutdown<\/a> \u2014 while Republicans held firm in opposition to an extension of the money.
\u201cI don\u2019t see that,\u201d said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., one of the Democrats who relented and voted to reopen the government. \u201cThat\u2019s just me.\u201d
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., one of four GOP senators who voted to advance an ACA funding extension, said the original fight over the 2010 law predates him. He called on Republicans to get over their 15-year beef with Obamacare and help their constituents.
\u201cPeople want us to do something to help them with the costs,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think they really care about who voted for what 20 years ago. They care about their health care costs going up.\u201d
Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeWASHINGTON \u2014 The Republican-led House and Senate adjourned Thursday until the new year with no solution on expiring health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, meaning insurance premiums for about 22 million Americans will rise next month.But despite opposition from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-194411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}