The Bellevue Compass

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Congress is putting up a self-imposed deadline to take votes on a healthcare plan to extend or replace expiring Obamacare subsidies before its holiday recess. But a lot remains in limbo: namely, what’s the plan? 

What’s Going on in Congress

If you haven’t seen the takeaways yet, the Monday interview with POLITICO and President Trump is worth a watch. In it, the president refused to endorse a continuation of expiring healthcare subsidies, stating, “I want to give the money to the people, not the insurance companies.” 

The deadline is closing in fast on the GOP conference, as the Senate expects to vote on Thursday on the Democratic proposal. At first, it appeared that Republicans would show up without their own side-by-side bill, spelling major trouble for the GOP, and they’re perfectly aware of it. 

“What signal would that send if Republicans say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to say no to the Democrats’ plan, but we’re not going to offer anything?’” Sen. Josh Hawley(R-Mo.) said. “The message that will send is, good luck to the American people, and we don’t really care.”

There are competing ideas, if not competing ideologies, within the conference about how to address the expiring credits. For some, a potential lapse in subsidies is unacceptable without an extension passed by Congress; for others, new frameworks are the way forward. 

In the end, after days of closed-door meetings, the GOP has emerged with Senators Mike Crapo of Idaho and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana’s bill, which expands health savings accounts and includes funding for Americans to spend on health expenses but does not extend the Obamacare subsidies. This is in line with Trump’s preferred idea. 

Let’s not hold our breath, though—it’s unlikely that either bill will get the sixty votes necessary to pass. At this point, the GOP is seeking only to counter the Democratic proposal in an official sense, knowing that showing up without an idea looks worse. 

Remember those discharge petitions we talked about? There’s talk of another one floating around in the House, related explicitly to PA Rep. Fitzpatrick’s healthcare bill, which has bipartisan backing. Speaking to POLITICO, Fitzpatrick believes that he has the 218 votes necessary to force the bill into a vote. It remains to be seen whether or not the Senate will get to a plan before the House passes its own. 

To cap it all off, the House Judiciary is having a subcommittee hearing on Obamacare subsidy fraud today at 2 pm, after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reportedly idenitified “several avenues of widespread fraud in Obamacare Marketplace plans, including large-scale failures that have allowed applicants using fake identities, stolen Social Security numbers and incorrect income estimates to receive Obamacare subsidies at taxpayers’ expense.” 

What’s going on outside of the healthcare fight? A few things. The first is that a cryptocurrency market structure bill that made it to the Senate Banking committee came back with 38 concessions that Republicans are willing to make to Democrats, “in exchange for 32 sections of the bill that GOP negotiators hope to keep in place or change.”

Could a rules vote tank the NDAA? The House is voting today on the National Defense Authorization Act, but it’s looking shaky whether or not the chamber will agree to advance the legislation to debate. Some members of the GOP are “turned off by leaders’ decision to drop some social policy riders as well as the inclusion of language that restricts Trump from significantly reducing U.S. troop levels in Europe.”

Legislation we’re watching: The Digital Trade Promotion Act, introduced Tuesday by Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.), “empowers the president to negotiate and enforce digital trade agreements”, but notably, also gives Congress the ability to review and block said agreements. A digital trade agreement is a formal treaty between countries that facilitates the exchange of goods and services over the internet. 

The Pennsylvania Impact

While we’ve spoken ad nauseam about the impact of expiring healthcare subsidies for Pennsylvanians, we’ll rehash some of the main points for emphasis: 

The expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies is a threat to nearly 500,000 Pennsylvanians who purchase coverage through Pennie, our state’s ACA marketplace. When subsidies expire, nationally, buyers on all state ACA marketplaces are likely to pay double for their insurance. 

Should the subsidy expiration happen without a plan to extend it, an estimated 270,000 Pennsylvanians are expected to lose their ACA marketplace coverage. We’ll make the point we made before again: The loss coverage will disproportionately affect rural areas, older residents who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare, and working middle-class earners—some of the GOP’s key voter base. 

At a rally in the Poconos on Monday night, President Trump sought to reassure voters about his administration’s handling of inflation and the state of the American economy. The effort is a continuation of his new message on affordability, which is complicated by his insistence on the economy’s overall strength—despite the feelings that indicate the opposite—and his typical characterization of “affordability concerns” being politically motivated by Democrats. The message is not aligning with voters’ reality. 

Governor Shapiro, in response, said, “The President’s statement does not reflect the reality on the ground here in a community where many Pennsylvanians voted for him in the last election,” Shapiro told Playbook. “The record is clear: his policies have hurt the very communities that propelled him to the White House. Trump’s tariffs and economic policies have raised prices at the grocery store, shuttered markets for our farmers, hurt our manufacturers, and dramatically increased the cost of living for Pennsylvanians.”

🔥 What We’re Watching

Did You Know? Latrobe, Pennsylvania, is the birthplace of the banana split, invented in 1904 by David Strickler, a pharmacy student!

Till next time,