Protecting Healthcare for Millions of Americans
Floor Speech
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Ms. RANDALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be here together on the House floor today to lead a conversation about how we fix our broken healthcare system.
Across our country, working families are feeling the pain of rising costs from every direction. Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have failed the American people. They promised to lower costs. Instead, costs keep going up. Housing is more expensive. Electricity bills are through the roof. Childcare costs keep rising.
Now, Republican leadership, who love to extend tax breaks for billionaires, are making things worse by, for months, refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act's tax credits for regular people. These tax credits, which expired on December 31, could have been continued had Republicans not skipped every opportunity to prevent it, but they chose to walk away from the negotiating table.
Let's be clear about why these tax credits exist. They were created because the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, and without help, millions of working families are simply unable to afford coverage.
This was never a handout. It was a lifeline. Yet, because Republicans refused to act before December 31, millions of Americans have faced skyrocketing healthcare costs.
In my district, I hear from neighbors every day about how devastating it has been to lose these tax credits. Right now, families who rely on the ACA in Washington's Sixth are facing an average increase of $1,500 a month in healthcare costs. That is some people's rent, three car payments. That strips the ability to put anything away in savings.
Even if you are on private insurance, monthly costs are estimated to rise across the board by 21 percent in Washington because of the overall strain on our system. When healthy people are priced out of insurance, costs go up for everyone else. That is just math.
This Republican-created crisis will price out an estimated 80,000 Washingtonians from coverage, and that doesn't even include the millions more in Washington and across the country who are losing care because of the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare.
Mr. Speaker, who is being hit hardest when these tax credits disappear? Women who are already struggling with restrictions to reproductive care, who make less money than men do, and who are on the front lines of growing childcare crises.
Who else will be impacted? LGBTQ Americans, who are more likely to rely on the ACA because of lower incomes and employment discrimination, on top of this administration rapidly stripping away access to their lifesaving care and protections.
Families really struggling to get by, living paycheck to paycheck, are more likely to work jobs without employer-provided benefits, making the ACA their only real option for coverage.
I want to make this clear: Republican leadership let tax credits expire in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires. They didn't make an abstract budget decision. They decided that their wealthy and well-connected donors deserved the very best that this country has to offer while condemning everyday Americans to lose health insurance and to have to wait until they are sick enough to end up in the emergency room.
I will say what we all know: We don't have a genuine healthcare system in this country. We have a sick care system, a system where people are forced to delay care until a problem becomes a crisis, a system where chronic conditions go unmanaged or managed with unprescribed medication, a system where cancers are caught later when treatment is more expensive and outcomes are worse, and a system where more people die.
One thing drove me to public service and has continued to drive me: Everyone deserves access to healthcare. That is why, in the State legislature, I worked every day to protect and expand access to care, passing laws to expand postpartum Medicaid so that new parents received the care that they needed after childbirth, establishing a universal healthcare commission, removing barriers to behavioral health and dental care, and lowering prescription drug prices.
I have seen the way families thrive when access to care is expanded and the devastation that follows when it is taken away. While families are worried about whether they can afford insulin, inhalers, or mental health care, Republican leadership chose inaction. They found time to give tax breaks to corporations but not to protect healthcare for working people before tax credits expired.
That tells you everything you need to know about Republican leadership priorities.
President Trump says that he has concepts of a plan and has been making empty promises for a decade, but the American people don't need concepts. We need affordable healthcare now.
I am very glad that 17 of my Republican colleagues joined Democrats today in doing the right thing by voting to extend the ACA tax credits for 3 more years to protect access to affordable healthcare. I hope that my colleagues in the Senate follow suit by passing this bill immediately, but I also know that it is not enough.
We need a universal healthcare system, a system where you can go to the doctor, receive the care you need, and walk out without worrying about what other bills you will have to skip to afford it.
We need a system where losing a job doesn't mean losing your healthcare and where starting a business doesn't mean risking your life in addition to your livelihood.
We need a system where no one lies awake at night wondering if they will be able to afford insulin, whether they will be able to afford it if their kid breaks their arm, or whether they will be able to afford it if their spouse has a pregnancy complication or a cancer diagnosis.
It is not radical. It is not unrealistic. It is humanity.
The United States, arguably the wealthiest country in the world, doesn't have a universal healthcare system like every advanced nation in the world does. It is time for our Nation's leaders to stop making excuses. It is time for us to find real solutions that put the American people first.
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Ms. RANDALL. The gentlewoman is right. I think all of us have been receiving stories, texts, emails, and phone calls from neighbors, friends, families, and constituents around the country who are impacted by rising healthcare costs because of the decisions that Republican leadership has made.
It is certainly not just my district. We know that in central Washington and Washington's Fourth District, a family of four earning $66,000 a year is seeing annual premium increases of $2,651.
In Louisiana's Fourth District, we are seeing a family of four that is earning $66,000 have the same increase.
In Texas, a 60-year-old couple earning $85,600 a year would see their premiums increase 333 percent, $20,466.
The numbers can sometimes feel abstract, right? What are those numbers? They are people.
Amanda in Bremerton told us that for her family, the ACA credits were the only way that she could afford healthcare. If they lose the discount with the ACA, they wouldn't be able to have healthcare, period. Her family members won't be able to afford the medications that they need to help keep them alive.
Healthcare should be affordable for all citizens in the United States. Amanda is worried that they will possibly lose their home if they get sick and have to go to a doctor.
Andrea from Tacoma works for a California-based company. The insurance that they offer would cost her $1,000 a month, which is out of her budget, but obtaining insurance through the Washington marketplace, with ACA tax credits, allowed her to purchase it for just $300 a month, less than a third of what her employer-sponsored coverage would be. She still struggles to make this payment.
If she can no longer afford healthcare, Andrea is going to feel the impact significantly. She makes just too much money to receive Apple Health, our version of Medicaid. She is pregnant. She will be swimming in medical debt. She says she is the only one who provides for her and her children.
Our neighbors deserve better, and they deserve us to keep fighting, not just for this ACA tax credit extension, which we will continue to put pressure on the Senate to pass, but also for a system that meets our needs nationwide.
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Ms. RANDALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Rivas.
Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, this comes down to a simple question: Who is Congress fighting for? Right now, Republican leadership is offering Americans higher healthcare costs, less coverage, and more uncertainty.
By refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits before they expired last month, they made healthcare costs more expensive for working families when people are already stretched thin.
I have heard from families across my district who are forgoing coverage this year because of the absurd premium increases.
A small business owner in Bremerton said that her new monthly premium for her family of three would be more than her mortgage, costing $35,000 a year. She is now being forced to look for a new job that includes health benefits and told us it is very likely she will have to sell her home in order to pay for insurance.
If the Senate doesn't pass the 3-year ACA extension immediately, families will be locked into these higher prices for 2026, and they will lose coverage. People will delay care, skip prescriptions, or avoid seeing a doctor, not because they don't need it, but because they can't afford it. That is not a healthcare system that works.
Healthcare is a human right, and your ability to get it shouldn't depend on how much you earn, where you live, or whether your employer offers coverage. No one should have to choose between paying rent and seeing a doctor or between putting food on the table and buying a prescription.
The ACA tax credits exist because Congress recognized a simple truth. Without them, millions of Americans would be priced out of care. These credits make coverage possible for seniors who are not yet eligible for Medicare, for small business owners, and gig workers, for families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to absorb soaring premiums. Allowing these tax credits to expire was a choice, and it was the wrong one.
Americans are being screwed by this administration. Tariffs are screwing our farmers and raising prices. Trump is killing energy projects that raise our utility bills, and Republicans screwed around with our health insurance by refusing to extend the ACA tax credits.
Congress has a real opportunity right now to take action: to lower costs, to protect coverage, and to improve the health of people across the country. Extending the ACA tax credits will keep families insured, reduce financial strain, and prevent avoidable deaths.
This is a moment for leadership, a moment to put people over politics. Republicans in the Senate must act to extend these tax credits. We must make it clear that in this country access to healthcare is not a privilege; it is a right worth protecting.
I am glad to be a partner in this fight with Representative Rivas and all of my other Democratic colleagues who spoke on the floor tonight.
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