Senators on Capitol Hill failed to advance two pieces of legislation on Thursday that would have addressed the imminent spiking of healthcare costs for millions of Americans.
The two proposals included a Republican plan that would have morphed expiring federal subsidies that currently address those annual premium costs into payments to health savings accounts (HSAs) for Americans seeking to buy insurance as well as a Democratic plan that would have extended those subsidies for two years.
The Democratic proposal received several votes from Republicans who crossed the line to support it, including Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. Both plans ultimately failed to break the 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Senators who spoke to reporters around the votes, particularly on the Democratic side, sounded frustrated that Republicans had left the issue until the very last minute.
âThere was a time, months ago, to negotiate whether there were some tweaks that needed to be made,â said a dismissive Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), speaking to a small gaggle on Thursday.
âAll Republicans are proposing right now is a meaningless way to solve their political problem. Theyâre really not interested in solving the health care crisis.â
The grumblings were far from isolated to the Democratic side.
âFor Godâs sake of living, we canât wait until 10 days before the end of the year and then repair healthcare,â complained Sen. Jim Justice, a Republican from West Virginia.
Federal subsidies for Obamacare exchange plans passed under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 under Joe Biden will expire at the end of the year. Already, thousands of Americans have received notifications that the annual premiums for plans they purchased off of the public exchanges will jump by as much as 100% or more in some cases next year.
The House and Senate have debated fixes for months, and Democrats sought to tie a clean extension of the subsidies for two years to their votes to end a federal government shutdown that lasted more than a month. Their efforts did not yield success, and eventually members of the partyâs caucus in the Senate backed down.
Now, the end of those subsidies (and the immediate effects of the cost increases) is just days away, with Congress seemingly little closer to coming to an agreement.
The White House meekly pushed for a plan that would include a two-year subsidy extension before the Thanksgiving holiday, but the sheer volume of Republican resistance in the House forced the president to backtrack, according to reports.
Now, a handful of Republicans remain on board with a clean extension of the subsidies. There is greater, but still reduced, appetite among the GOP for an extension of the subsidies with new income caps. But the president himself continues to push for the subsidies to be made into direct payments to consumers (such as via HSAs), which does not appear to have the numbers to pass either chamber.
One of the architects of the GOP plan, Sen. Bill Cassidy, urged Democrats to get over what he said was their red line: Forcing the government to pay for subsidies that went directly to insurance companies. The senator, who chairs the Health committee, was adamant that there couldnât be a negotiation until the opposition party budged.
â$6,000 deductibles do not meet the American people where they are,â Cassidy said. âI’m asking all of us to have sympathy where our fellow Americans are, and our fellow Americans don’t have $6k sitting around in order to pay for this. To have sympathy where they are, and that is to give them a pre funded account with which they can pay then out of pocket for the insurance.â
But as Thursdayâs votes ended, it looked increasingly likely that cutting a deal with Democrats could be a path forward for Republicans who are desperate to avert the cost hikes from hitting at the beginning of what already looks to be a bruising midterm year.
Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, entering an elevator, told reporters that she was open to looking at a Republican plan that involved morphing the subsidies into HSA payments as long as those HSAs could still be used to tackle the cost of premiums.
She and her party remain adamant that Republicans were not serious about offering such a fix at this time. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, spoke to reporters ahead of the vote and noted that each Republican proposal (so far) included efforts to expand Hyde Amendment restrictions (which forbid any money from going to organizations that provide abortions), which Democrats view as a complete nonstarter.
Eric Garcia contributed reporting.
