Republicans Have Delivered in 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. MOORE of Utah. Madam Speaker, I am glad to be joined by several of my colleagues for this last Conference Special Order of the year to talk about ways we have delivered for all Americans through our legislative action, committee work, and more.

I understand some of my colleagues have commitments, and I am going to be respectful of their time, so I will have them start us off before I provide some of my own comments.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Kennedy), a good friend.

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Mr. MOORE of Utah. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah, a physician and attorney, for bringing up all of these issues. It is so important to call up the reality of it.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Loudermilk).

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Mr. MOORE of Utah. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's remarks.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Guest).

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Mr. MOORE of Utah. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman).

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Mr. MOORE of Utah. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin and the issue that he brings up. It is something that some of my State legislators are working on, namely Ms. Melissa Garff Ballard. She is an excellent policymaker and lawmaker back home. This is something she cares deeply about and is doing quite a lot of good work on at the State level. I applaud her for that.

Madam Speaker, I thank you and all my colleagues for your comments this evening. It is very much appreciated.

As we move into the next couple of weeks when we get to celebrate the holidays, it is excellent to look back and think about the amazing work that has taken place over the last year. As it is dominating the headlines, we recognize there is a lot to talk about with healthcare, particularly this week. I want to touch on a few aspects.

To be abundantly clear, Republicans are currently dealing with the aftermath of what has been a decade or so of failure. The Democrats put in place an unaffordable and fraudulent healthcare system.

For years, Democrats promised ObamaCare would lower costs. In reality, premiums have increased nearly 80 percent since the so-called Affordable Care Act was enacted. The average premium for family coverage is nearly $27,000 per year.

A report from the Government Accountability Office confirms what Republicans have said for years. There is significant fraud associated with COVID-era enhanced premium tax credits established by the trifecta of President Joe Biden and majorities in the House and Senate led by Democrats.

Again, in 2021, Democrats put in place what is called the enhanced premium tax credits. They did this during their COVID-era bills: The American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act. These were two bills that were massive expansions for several programs. In particular, they were able to pass this legislation on party-line votes and set it for 4 years. Democrats set this policy during COVID to last for 4 years and expire at the end of this year.

In this study, GAO found that 58,000 enrollees matched Social Security death records, with 7,000 of them being deceased before enrollment began. One Social Security number was even associated with 125 different ObamaCare policies in one year. That is the first level of potential fraud.

The second item is that a zero-dollar premium obviously leads to more fraud, and that is what we have seen happen. Enrollment went up without people using or even knowing that they had coverage. This is something we need checks and balances on.

When they moved the original Obama subsidies--and those aren't going anywhere. They are still in place. They are not expiring at the end of this year. They have existed from the start. It is only the Democrat Party's 2021 enhanced version that is expiring.

The worst aspect of those, in my opinion, is the fact that a person used to be required to pay just 2 percent of their annual income toward health insurance premiums. The taxpayer dollars paid the insurance company the remainder of that. A person was only required to pay 2 percent. That moved to zero percent in 2021.

Since 2021, there was a massive expansion of people being on these premiums and this insurance coverage but never using it. They never used it year over year, but the insurance company continued to get taxpayer-funded subsidies directly to them to cover nothing because they never used it.

The percentage of people who weren't using their health insurance went up significantly. It wasn't like people were getting hurt or sick at a similar rate. What was happening was they didn't know they were in the system. As part of the GAO study will explain, they were getting signed up.

The last final piece that I will highlight here are the income caps. People could still be making 400 percent above the Federal poverty level the insurance companies that they were getting signed up for were still receiving these subsidies.

Originally, when we talk about ObamaCare, it was just for folks who were very low-income and were uninsured and didn't have the ability to make any payments toward covering their own insurance.

What ObamaCare does is it says if a person is 100 percent or 150 percent of poverty level, all that is required is that the person pay 2 percent of their income, the Federal taxpayers will cover the rest, it will be sent it to the insurance company, and the subsidy will be covered. In most cases that is $300 a year a person would have to cover of their own.

When that moved to zero dollars, that is when a lot of fraud happened. Even if a person is paying $5, $10, or $20 a month toward insurance, at least you know it is an actual policy and going somewhere. When it becomes zero dollars, all sorts of shenanigans can happen. That is something we have to move away from.

With this enhanced version of these COVID-era subsidies expiring on the Democrats' timeline, then that zero-dollar aspect will go away. It will be $200 a year for some folks, as opposed to zero dollars. That alone will create an opportunity to cut away a lot of fraud.

Democrats created a program that Americans can't afford. The unaffordable care act works for insurance companies, but it does not work for patients. Like I mentioned, it is filled with waste and fraud.

Insurance revenues have increased from $245 billion, when ObamaCare was originally passed, to $1.4 trillion in 2023. I love it when private-sector company growth happens. I am a big supporter of it. I have supported tax policy to ensure that can happen.

That type of increase, when ObamaCare gets established, to see that rampant amount of growth, there is a problem there. We can celebrate economic growth across the board, shareholder value, and all that stuff. When we look at the massive increase year over year, aside from revenue and profits, there is something wrong with this entire situation. We can directly correlate it to when ObamaCare came into play.

We can't have insurance companies seeing such record profits and at the same time taxpayers are forced to sort of subsidize these plans. That is not a healthy way to grow a market.

The Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare, ACA--broke the American healthcare system. It created numerous problems over the last decade. Since its inception, these premium costs have skyrocketed. Networks have shrunk, and the system has become bloated and inefficient.

It is important to remember that the enhanced premium tax credit expiration at the end of the year, again, was set by Democrats. When they are complaining that Republicans are going to let this expire, that was their timeline. This zero-dollar issue and then not capping it, so it is only targeted towards lower-income individuals, had to go away. Even in compromise and bipartisan approaches to deal with this expiration, those aspects had to go away. Those are things that were on the chopping block.

Again, I think when folks understand, the subsidies aren't going away entirely. If a person is a low-income individual and making 100 percent of the Federal poverty line--and for a single person, that is maybe $15,000 or $20,000 a year--that plan will only require that person to pay a few hundred dollars a year.

Just by moving it so it doesn't go to zero dollars creates it so there is not so much fraud in the system. Then, hopefully, over time we don't see this rapid, rapid increase in premiums because that is bad for all Americans.

Americans simply deserve better, and we have not been giving the healthcare system with the exception of ObamaCare.

This is why House Republicans have proposed legislation that delivers real relief. The Lower Healthcare Premiums for All Americans Act focuses on lasting policies that provide predictability and transparency.

As the name suggests, this is focused on the entirety of the individuals on healthcare. This isn't just targeted toward a small 7 percent of the total population that is that narrow margin in ObamaCare. This is touching every single person, and that is the only way to actually lower health premium costs over time.

This bill lowers premiums through pharmacy transparency and cost- sharing reductions. This legislation improves options for workers by expanding access to associated health plans. It also ensures that small and midsize employers can offer more tailored, affordable care, and it codifies and strengthens CHOICE arrangements, permitting employees to pay their premiums pretax.

All of those things are targeted toward a broad group of people and not just this tiny little subset that we are hearing a lot of complaining about right now. We are actually focused on the entirety of the world that is out there paying more and more for their health insurance.

It is time to implement policies that work for all Americans and that provide predictability and affordability.

I am grateful to be a voice from Utah on the Committee on Ways and Means Health Subcommittee during this critical moment, and I am excited to see this legislation move forward and delivering real results, savings, and peace of mind for Utahns and Americans across the country.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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