Congress has until midnight on Tuesday to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open.
The hold up? Health care—and Republicans, according to comments by Sen. Richard Blumenthal at a press conference on Monday morning, just hours before he flew to Washington D.C. to negotiate a continuing resolution.
“There are a couple of very simple, straightforward conditions that the Democrats are demanding, and Republicans have been refusing to negotiate,” Blumenthal said. “The health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expire at the end of the year. Open enrollment begins in Connecticut on November 1. People need to know whether they can afford health insurance before they enroll. Without the subsidies they will pay, on average, 75% more for health care.”
In 2021, as a part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), Congress passed enhanced premium tax credits for the ACA, which allowed people who were previously ineligible to enroll in state health care programs. In Connecticut, those programs are run by Access Health CT.
If the enhanced subsidies are not extended, Blumenthal predicts both the number of uninsured people and premiums will increase.
Around 150,000 people are enrolled in Access Health, and 90% of them receive some sort of financial support from ACA tax credits. The number of people receiving financial assistance increased by 30% after the enhanced credits were introduced.
Access Health CEO James Michel believes that between 30% and 35% of people enrolled in an Access Health program will leave by 2034 if the enhanced subsidies are not renewed.
Around 28,000people will lose coverage immediately, because they will be ineligible. This estimate is based on Access Health’s enrollment numbers before the ACA tax credits were introduced, Michel explained at Access Health’s most recent Board of Directors meeting, which took place on Sept. 18.
An additional 5,300 will lose health insurance because of a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that limits who can get state-subsidized health care based on immigration status. The rest of the drop-offs will leave on their own over time, Michel said at the meeting.
“This (ACA tax credit) program is widespread and pervasive in its assistance to people in affording health care insurance,” Blumenthal said. “Without it, premiums will rise for everyone. Why? Because the healthy people will say, ‘I don’t need health insurance.’ If they’re healthy, they’ll do without it, because it isn’t worth the additional costs. The sicker people, or the more vulnerable potential patients, will enroll and cost more for the health insurance companies to provide that health care, and consequently, premiums will rise for everyone.”
Connecticut Department of Social Services Commissioner (DSS) Andrea Barton Reeves, like Blumenthal, predicts that health care premiums will increase if the ACA tax credits end.
But the extent to which costs will change is unknown.
A recent study from the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found that the expiration of the ACA tax credits alone will have a very minimal impact on health care spending in Connecticut. The Urban Institute found that, across the board, uncompensated health care spending will increase by less than one percent through the end of 2026, and all health care spending for the non-elderly would only change by 0.2%.
But for some people, the cost of health insurance could increase by thousands of dollars a year, Blumenthal said.
Permanently expanding the enhanced tax credits until 2035, following the model that was introduced by ARPA and extended in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, would increase the federal deficit by $350 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reports. The number of people with health insurance will also increase by 3.8 million.
At the Access Health Board of Directors meeting, Michel said that the group is lobbying to renew the ACA tax credits, but is preparing for them to expire.
Blumenthal is hoping to work out a deal with the Republicans about the ACA tax credits by midnight tomorrow. If a continuing resolution is passed, a government shutdown will be averted, but Congress will still have to negotiate the rest of the budget.
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Left out of the article was the fact that these benefits were expanded as a result of the Covid epidemic and that the federal government wants to rein in these cost again. We’ve got a national debt crisis pending. Please provide more comprehensive information to these articles.