Rising Healthcare Costs
Floor Speech
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Mrs. SYKES. Mr. Speaker, today I rise because families in Ohio's 13th Congressional District and across the country are already paying the price for Republicans' inaction on healthcare. The enhanced ACA premium tax credits expired December 31, 2025, and now health coverage is more expensive and families are already feeling the impact.
In my district, 90 percent of the 32,000 people who get ACA coverage rely on those subsidies. Four out of five were previously able to find plans for $10 or less per month. That safety net is now gone. Families are seeing premiums jump by hundreds of dollars a month or thousands of dollars a year. Across the country, more than 4 million Americans have already lost or are at risk of losing their healthcare coverage entirely.
This isn't a theory. It is happening right now. In Canton, AultCare, a regional insurer tied to Aultman Hospital, stopped offering some individual family and small business ACA plans before December 31. That affects 6,000 people in my district. These are working families and small business employees losing coverage because Republicans refuse to act.
I have fought to protect these credits by cosponsoring legislation to extend them and by signing on to Leader Jeffries' discharge petition to bring the issue to a vote on the House floor. Instead of acting, Speaker Johnson and House Republicans chose to delay, and that action is simply unacceptable.
Don't just take my word for it. Just a few weeks ago, Congressman Mike Lawler called Speaker Johnson's refusal to allow a vote idiotic and political malpractice, and I agree. What happened? Speaker Johnson sent us home for the holidays while American families paid the price.
Republicans also pushed a partisan healthcare bill that would make things much worse by increasing the number of uninsured people, shifting costs onto working families, and weakening the protections that so many Americans rely upon.
I offered an amendment to protect working families from losing health coverage and to protect access to reproductive healthcare. But guess what. Republicans blocked it. Once again, they chose politics over people.
We cannot forget the real people caught in the middle of this. These are families deciding between healthcare and groceries and between medicine and rent. Access to healthcare should be a right, not a gamble. At a time when we are talking about the horrors and tragic costs of the drug trade and the impact it has on American people, let us not forget how people get drug treatment. It is from the Medicaid program that has already been cut by a trillion dollars and the ACA marketplace health plans.
The Republicans' failure to act is literally going to kill people across this country. They let deadlines pass, premiums rise, and coverage disappear. That is not leadership. That is failure.
Mr. Speaker, the choice is clear. Congress can either act to restore affordable healthcare or we can continue to let premiums sore, coverage vanish, and families face financial ruin.
I know one thing is for certain, Mr. Speaker. I was brought to Congress to work on behalf of the people of Ohio's 13th Congressional District to lower costs, to keep them safe, and to make sure that they had affordable, accessible healthcare coverage.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage every single Member of this Chamber to do those things, not only for the people in my district but for the people all across America who are asking and needing Congress to act.
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