Four House Republicans who are worried about the Affordable Care Act health insurance “subsidy cliff” are trying to help House Democrats force a vote by the full House on a subsidy extension bill.
The Republicans today signed a discharge petition that calls for the House to bring a subsidy extension resolution up for a vote on the House floor.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the House minority leader, started the petition Nov. 12. The petition now has the 218 votes needed to pass.
The underlying resolution calls for Congress to extend the current level of ACA premium tax credit subsidies for three years. The current version of the measure includes no employee health benefits provisions.
The House is already preparing to consider a package of health bills that includes the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Act bill. That bill would help small employers team up to use association health plans to buy health benefits and create a new framework for individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement “cash for coverage” health plans.
What it means: The effort to get an ACA subsidy boost bill to the House floor could have hard-to-predict effects on getting an employee benefits package through Congress.
An ACA bill could take energy away from the benefits bill or create opportunities for dealmakers to get benefits packages through Congress, either as part of a package with an ACA subsidy measure or in the form of a bill to be considered alongside an ACA subsidy boost bill.
The backdrop: A temporary, COVID-era ACA subsidy boost for people who buy individual or family coverage through the ACA public exchange system is set to expire Dec. 31. For some older, relatively high-income exchange plan users, the expiration means their share of the cost of coverage for a family of four could rise to more than $50,000, from less than $10,000 now.
Members of the Senate voted on consideration of two ACA subsidy cliff measures last week and failed to move either to the Senate floor.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. and Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., have both been trying to round up support for two ACA subsidy boost bills. The bills attracted bipartisan support.
When the House Rules Committee was considering the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Act package at a meeting Tuesday, the sponsors of the bipartisan ACA subsidy boost bills tried and failed to attach the bills as amendments to the package.
In the past, discharge petitions were rarely introduced and rarely succeeded.
But Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, recently succeeded at using a discharge petition to overcome opposition of House Republican leaders and get a bill protecting federal workers’ ability to join unions through the House.