Congress heads home without doing anything about spiraling health costs

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Dec 18, 2025

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The Republican Congress headed home for the holidays Thursday without doing anything about health insurance costs set to skyrocket for more than 20 million Americans when Affordable Care Act tax credits expire on Jan. 1.

Despite an eleventh-hour squabble over dueling proposals and with President Donald Trump mostly silent, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson scrapped Friday votes and sent the House home a day early.

Trump expressed no interest in getting involved in the debate over the Obamacare credits.

“I don’t know why we have to extend,” he said Thursday at an unrelated press event.

Johnson didn’t bring up a Democratic bill that would extend the subsidies for three years even after a handful of Republican moderates crossed the aisle to demand a vote on it. The House will consider the bill only in January, after millions of Americans get hit with sticker shock or are unable to pay for insurance at all.

Even if the tax credit extension bill passes in the House, the Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune says the upper chamber is unlikely to even consider it, let alone pass it with the 60 votes needed.

The Senate also prepared to head home without taking up the Republican House health bill that passed on a party line vote late Wednesday.

That measure includes several conservative health care goals designed to give Republican lawmakers talking points to defend their stance to voters who give Trump’s GOP poor marks on both health care and rising costs.

Trump barely mentioned health care in his prime time speech late Wednesday. He pointed the finger at Democrats for higher health insurance premiums coming in 2026, even though it’s his own party leaders who allowed the tax credits to expire.

“You see that now in the steep increase in premiums being demanded by the Democrats,” Trump said. “It’s their fault.”

Democratic congressional leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer say Republicans have chosen not to deal with the looming health crisis for months, even though they could have done so in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which included steep cuts to Medicaid for lower-income people.

“The American people deserve a vote on the Affordable Care Act tax credit legislation and deserve that vote today,” Jeffries said on the steps of the Capitol.

“House Republicans have spent months sitting on [their] hands while these tax credits were set to expire … and letting premiums soar for working families,” said Riya Vashi, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Voters will hold them accountable next year.”

Republicans, who control both houses of Congress and the White House, say Democrats are more interested in scoring political points than reaching a bipartisan solution.

The stakes are high as the political world starts to focus on next year’s midterm congressional elections. Democrats hope a blue wave powered by anger over rising costs can catapult them back into control of the House and maybe even the Senate.