Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. GUTHRIE. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 953, I call up the bill (H.R. 6703) to ensure access to affordable health insurance, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. GUTHRIE. 6703.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 6703, the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act.
When the Democrats passed ObamaCare over a decade ago, they sold the bill on the promise that it would lower healthcare costs and preserve plan options. If you like your plan, you can keep it and if you like your doctor, you can keep them, we remember being quoted. These famous last words still haunt us.
Today, we know that ObamaCare has not lived up to the Democrats' lofty promises. Instead, the consequences of that bill continue to burden American patients as they have since its enactment. Healthcare spending has nearly doubled since ObamaCare passed.
Healthcare plan options have been decimated by Democratic overreach, and millions of Americans are saddled with medical debt across the country.
ObamaCare premiums are up 80 percent since the program's inception, with patients paying on average $5,000 out of their own pocket to hit their deductible. The average out-of-pocket spending maximum for 1 year is over $20,000. Without a doubt, ObamaCare has proven to be unaffordable and unsustainable.
In an attempt to respond to the affordability crisis created by ObamaCare, Democrats leveraged a public health emergency to shovel hundreds of billions of dollars to big health insurance plans to mask the risk of rising unaffordability of coverage. First, in the American Rescue Plan of 2021 and then again in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2023, Democrats sent temporary taxpayer-funded enhanced premium tax credits directly to the coffers of big insurance plans.
They did this without a single Republican vote of support. On both occasions, Democrats chose to make these COVID credits temporary. They could have made them permanent, but they chose instead to focus on advancing priorities for wealthy Americans, which some of these they did make permanent by subsidizing electric vehicles for politically connected cronies to siphon off Federal dollars of the greenhouse gas slush fund.
Now, Democrats are uniting behind that policy to send billions more of taxpayer dollars to big health insurance plans. With the Democrats' temporary COVID credits set to expire at the end of the year, they are attempting to turn their policy failures into political gains using the American people as collateral.
It is worth reiterating. Democrats funded temporary Band-Aids to cover up unaffordable care. They set the expiration dates. They chose to fund liberal priorities instead of making them permanent.
While Democrats continue to fearmonger, I want to shed light on what Republicans are doing to fix the Democrats' affordability crisis, with policies that deliver real, lasting relief to the American people. These include eliminating health plan gimmicks like silver loading, which will lower ACA premiums by 11 percent; increasing transparency for pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen that will lower costs of drugs for all Americans; and increasing affordable plan choices and putting patients back in the driver's seat for their own healthcare plan choices by instituting association health plans, CHOICE arrangements, and stop-loss insurance.
This proposal results in more than double the premium reduction that Democrats' extension of the enhanced tax credit subsidies would. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this plan will lower premiums by 11 percent compared to just 5 percent from the Democratic subsidies. These policies will also lower healthcare costs for all Americans, not just the roughly 7 percent enrolled in the ObamaCare marketplace. Many of these policies are bipartisan: Ending silver loading, addressing nefarious PBM practices, and strengthening the employer insurance marketplace all have garnered broad bipartisan support.
I hope we can overlook politics that are clouding the issue and come together to pass this bill and continue to work together in 2026 to deliver more affordable healthcare to all Americans.
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Mr. GUTHRIE. Mr. Speaker, I will remind my friends that the premium tax credits from the ACA are extended. They are permanent. These are the enhanced premium tax credits. It is good, and sad, that my colleagues are recognizing that the Affordable Care Act is failing.
Mr. Speaker, we have heard sad stories. Last night, in the Rules Committee, the Rules chairman read through different stuff. The Rules' ranking member was in townhalls and heard stories about people who had to buy care on the Affordable Care Act marketplace that is failing.
There is one thing nobody has ever answered. They say they have to face their constituents. Do my colleagues explain to their constituents that in the bill that they voted for that gave billions of dollars of the Green New Deal; in the same bill they set these tax cuts to expire?
I know it was during reconciliation they could have done them within 10 years instead of 5. They also could have done them permanently. There is a way in reconciliation to do them permanently, as well.
No one on the other side has ever explained why they chose to make these tax credits expire. I am still waiting to hear the answer for that.
In the meantime, we have our bill that will lower premiums, calculated by CBO, in the individual market by 11 percent, as opposed to the 5 percent that would happen if we just passed the enhanced tax credits. Not just the 7 percent in the ObamaCare marketplace will benefit but all Americans will benefit from this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I again ask the question: Why were these set to expire? We hear the stories that people are reading about people in their districts, and they say how it is unconscionable. It is unconscionable that money was spent on the Green New Deal at the expense of the enhanced tax credits they talk about.
We want to solve it. Mr. Speaker, $39,000 is what is brought up for healthcare. That is the problem in America. Mr. Speaker, $39,000 for health insurance is what we have to fix.
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Mr. GUTHRIE.
Mr. Speaker, we are here to solve the problem for all Americans. Mr. Speaker, 20 million people are trapped in the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Our proposal lowers those premiums by 11 percent.
There are over 160 million Americans who get it through their employers. There are Americans on other types of health insurance. We need to fix this problem.
My good friend from Florida, Mr. Speaker, said $39,000 is what they pay for health insurance. That is the problem. That is what we need to fix.
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