Democratic Lawmakers Will Push To Renew Extra ACA Subsidies

LOADING ERROR LOADING One of the bigger and more underappreciated policy debates coming to Congress this year will be over whether to extend a Biden-era initiative that’s helping millions of Americans to pay for their health insurance. What Democrats Want To Do Now Shaheen and her Wisconsin colleague, fellow Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, plan to introduce legislation on Thursday that would make the extra assistance permanent. “But if the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits expire, costs will increase across the country and millions of Americans would be at risk of losing coverage altogether.” Baldwin, in a separate statement to HuffPost, said the proposal is in line with longtime efforts by her and some of her colleagues to make health care more affordable through government-financed programs. And then there’s the fact that the money is connected to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, the law Donald Trump and Republicans spent so much time trying to repeal last time he was president. Back in September, when the three Democratic lawmakers were trying to push last year’s legislation, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Post that the extra assistance “benefit big insurance companies and brokers more than American patients.” In her response, the Post reported, Leavitt linked to a paper from the right-leaning Paragon Institute that was critical of the extra assistance.