WASHINGTON, D.C. - Time is running out for those in Congress wanting to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Senate Democrats, who were promised a vote on legislation (of their choosing) to extend the subsidies by the end of this week, will apparently attempt to pass a straightforward, three-year extension; it is unlikely to pass. A bipartisan House group, meanwhile, has put forward a plan for a two-year extension with restrictions that many Republicans have called for. Senate Republicans have been working on a similar bill. Still, the vast majority of Republicans, including the Oklahoma delegation, oppose the extension of ‘Obamacare’ tax credits unless it is part of a comprehensive overhaul of health care policy. The result could well be legislative gridlock, with failure to act meaning millions of Americans (and more than 200,000 Oklahomans) facing substantially higher premiums in 2026.

Oklahoma Congressman Kevin Hern (R-OK1), who serves on the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Health, spoke recently with Griffin Media’s Washington Bureau Chief Alex Cameron about the situation.

...on whether he and his colleagues are working to address the looming expiration of subsidies:

HERN: “The answer is, yes, we are working on items. So this has been an issue long before I got in Congress. Going back to 2010 with the Obamacare initiative, the Affordable Care Act — as we learned now, it’s very unaffordable — when then-President Obama, the biggest cheerleader of his namesake, said you are going to see lower premiums. You’re going to see more access, more doctors, you can keep your doctor, all of those things. If you go back and just do a little bit of AI, Google or whatever you want to do, you’ll see that all of those have been a fallacy. In fact, the late Senator Tom Coburn predicted exactly what we’re seeing today. We would see rural hospitals close. We would see the sons and daughters of doctors then not wanting to go to medical school, because the benefit of being a doctor would be outweighed by the regulations of government. He said you would see rising health care costs. We’ve seen that to the tune of well over 100%. We’ve seen 80 hospitals close. Everything that could go wrong with a government-run health care system has happened—the costs are enormous. We spend more money per patient than anywhere else in the world. And so the only way we’re going to solve this is in a bipartisan way—this shouldn’t be political at all. What we have learned is throwing more money at it—I mean, you’ve got to remember that what you’re talking about with the paying of tax credits are something that the Democrats intentionally had expire in ’23, renewed again to ’25, the COVID-era relief. COVID is over. It’s been over for a few years now. We need to get after the real problem, which is the underlying cost of health care. That’s going to be done in a bipartisan way.”

CAMERON: “You’re saying it ‘will’ be done?”

HERN: “That’s the only way it’s going to work. I mean, because the Democrats want to just keep spending more and more money. I think it’s important for the viewers to note this, is that the $400 billion that the Democrats want to spend on this premium tax cut extension only goes to about 5 million people in America. The other 240 million privately insured people around the United States are still going to see premium increases. And, by the way, even these 5 million are going to see, probably, a roughly 25% increase. The $400 billion would reduce that by 7 or 8%. So they’ll still see 17-18% increases. So, throwing more federal dollars — by the way, which every single one would be borrowed — at a problem without fixing the underlying issues is not going to solve anything. The costs are continue to go higher. The risk pools will be higher, and the costs will be, which is what Obama wanted to do, is force a single payer system, a national health care system.”

...on whether he believes any features of the Affordable Care Act are worth keeping:

HERN: “Well, again, I think it’s important to note we’re not talking about getting rid of Obamacare. I mean, if you love Obamacare, you can keep Obamacare. There’s about 25 to 35 million people at any given time on the exchange, the individual markets. What we’re talking about is rolling back the expanded Obamacare premiums that now give reductions on premiums to people making up to $320,000 to $400,000 a year, which, you know, that’s a —that’s a very high echelon of people in Oklahoma, as an example, that are getting subsidies that everybody else in America are paying for. We, again, think they need to fix the underlying cost. When you also look at what’s going on across the entire health care system, these dollars are going directly to the insurance companies. They’re not going to the individual to reduce their—so they (could) actually see a 1-to-1 correlation about reducing the cost of the premium that they would otherwise—ya know, if they saw an increase in the premium and there was a benefit coming to them, then they would they would be able to buy that down or shop somewhere else. That’s the principle of what the president has talked about, what I’ve talked about, what then-Senator Coburn talked about, is Americans — Oklahomans, more specifically — are smart enough to buy their life insurance, their home insurance, their car insurance, they shop, they look for the best deal, the right coverage. Why can’t they also do that with their health care? And the simple reason is because my Democrat colleagues in the House and the Senate, they want to own health care. They want you, as a citizen of America, to be beholden to the federal government for your health care. If I can control your health care, then I can control you. And we as Republicans, we think it’s better to give you your money and let you shop and let the free market apply here. The free market has been destroyed in the health care system, which is why costs are out of control. The free market is what made America the greatest nation in the world. And yet the health care system in America is faltering because it has become closer and closer to socialized medicine, what we see in Europe, Great Britain and elsewhere around the world.”

...on the fact that many Republicans (those in swing districts, generally) are joining Democrats in pushing to find a way to extend the subsidies because they are worried that failure to do so will hurt their chances for reelection in 2026:

HERN: “Well, it’s the most frustrating thing about being in the job. Certainly, being in business 35 years, you know the problem before you, you see it coming. It’s not like it’s a mystery. It’s not that we woke up one day and knew we had a health care problem. And then we allow an election to have us do bad behaviors, on both sides, the Democrats and Republicans. We don’t do budgets because they’re hard. We don’t make tough decisions on how to rein in the cost of health care. So, therefore, we let the election decide, ‘Oh, we just got to do something’, because it’s political. ‘We’re going to lose control of the House. We’re going to lose elections.’ But—the overall, the American people, they don’t care as much about elections as they do about the affordability of one of the most expensive things in their life, which is health care, the cost of their home. We should be working on those things. And if we worked on those things and focused on those things, the elections would take care of themselves. But instead, we focus more on the elections up here, and that’s what, you know, really frustrates a guy like me who sees these policies, that If we worked together, Democrats and Republicans—I really don’t care who’s in charge. If we get this solved for the American people, we’re all going to be better off for it, and our kids and our grandkids.”

Read the full article here.