WASHINGTON — This morning, at the weekly House Republican Leadership press conference, Speaker Johnson discussed House Republicans’ efforts to lower health care premiums for all Americans, increase health care access, expand health care choices, and bring greater transparency to America’s health care system through the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act. Speaker Johnson also highlighted House Republicans’ extensive accomplishments in the first session of the 119th Congress.
“The Washington Post summarized all this best in one simple sentence. They said, ‘The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable.’ That’s the problem,” Speaker Johnson said. “America’s health care system should be the envy of the world. Instead, it’s the most expensive in the world, and the American people are not getting any healthier.”
Watch Speaker Johnson’s full remarks here
On the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act:
For all the obvious reasons, all Americans deserve a health care system that puts patients first; one that meets their needs with more access, more choice, and more affordable quality care. And House Republicans have offered legislation to begin fixing what is broken and to restore integrity to our nation’s health care system. And it’s so long overdue. The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act will be on the floor tomorrow; it is the first big step in that regard.
It offers common sense solutions to lower premium costs for everybody, for all Americans. It expands access to quality care. It provides every American with more options and flexibility to choose coverage that works for them. And it brings greater transparency to America’s health care system. And the bill has five key reforms. I’ll just reiterate some of this real quickly. It reduces premium costs through cost sharing reduction payments, brings pharmacy benefit manager transparency and removes the hidden costs of prescription drugs, it allows small business owners and independent workers to form association health plans to provide more choice for employees to customize their healthcare plans, and it protects small businesses from costly regulatory overreach. According to the latest CBO projection, Republicans cost sharing reduction payments, just that provision alone, would reduce premiums by at least 11% and will save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, about $30 billion.
On Democrats fighting to continue subsidizing their broken, wasteful health care system:
It is the Democrats’ Unaffordable Care Act that broke America’s health care system, and it’s the Democrats who’ve refused every good faith Republican effort to fix it along the way. This is 15 years into this saga that the American people have been drug through, because the Democrats decided 15 years ago to break the system. They insisted when they passed the Unaffordable Care Act that it would reduce premiums; it would provide more choice and higher quality and all of that. And none of that ever happened. In fact, quite the opposite effect is what we have seen. All this was foreseeable, and that’s why Republicans didn’t support it. Premiums have skyrocketed. The quality of care has plummeted in so many places and in so many cases around the country. And the fraud is absolutely rampant in the system, and it’s costing everyone dearly.
Yes, there is a health care affordability problem in America. It’s a very serious problem for almost every family. But it is an indisputable fact, the Democrats caused that problem, and Republicans are the ones having to cleaned it up. For 15 long years, Americans have now faced skyrocketing premiums, fewer quality choices, inefficient care and widespread fraud, waste, and abuse. Benchmark premiums for on the Obamacare marketplace, for every plan, have increased 80% overall since 2014, and they’re continuing to rise. The Unaffordable Care Act marketplace has resulted in lower quality plan offerings and less consumer choices. Today, fraud is absolutely rampant. Paragon Health is one of the analyst groups, and they estimate there’s over 6.4 million people who are improperly enrolled in the Obamacare exchange. And a recent GAO study, the Government Accountability Office, found some staggering facts. It proved what we all know intuitively about the fraud that’s involved in this program. They found that Obamacare subsidy system lacks even the most basic guardrails to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.
On Democrats flip-flopping over their support for Cost Sharing Reduction Payments:
The Democrats’ subsidy proposal would only lower premiums for a small subset of people. Now, think of this. Just 7% of America case would benefit. When they passed the COVID-era enhanced subsidy, enhanced premium tax credit, it would only affect and only did affect 7% of American people. If it was extended today, if their gambit was done and without any reforms and they expanded it for three years, which is what they tried to do in the Senate, and they failed last week, and what they would try to do in the House if allowed, that would only reduce for the 7% of Americans, it would only reduce their costs by 5.7%. This is not some solution to the problem. It’s just adding more money, further subsidizing the broken system, and the subsidies go to insurance companies. They’re not trying to solve the cost problem. They’re trying to hide that. And it’s not the way to fix it. It would also, by the way, cost taxpayers if the subsidy was extended, would cost American taxpayers $350 billion over the next 10 years. Again, the proposal doesn’t lower health care costs in any way. It only hides the true cost of a failed law.
I’ll remind you; CSR payments are not a new idea. In fact, in 2017, the thing that we’re going to put on the floor tomorrow, a big part of that, 196 House Democrats, many of them still in Congress, wrote a letter in support of that very idea – exactly what the Republican bill this week will accomplish. Now, they won’t tell you that this week. I’m certain they’re all going to vote against it. Why? As was said here many times this morning, they do not want a solution. Democrats do not want a solution. They want an issue in the upcoming election. And they think that the media will go along with this and that people will buy it. That their heroic effort to extend this, this COVID-era subsidy that they themselves created and that they themselves put the expiration date on at the end of this year, that they’re going to try to convince you that that’s all health care wrapped into that. Remember, it only affects 7% of Americans and could only reduce their cost by less than 6%. Democrats also had a chance to support our provision. House Democrats voted against it. And the Senate Democrats did as well. That cost sharing reduction would reduce everybody’s premiums by almost 12%. The Democrats fought to take it out.
On House GOP accomplishments in the first year of the 119th Congress:
We obviously passed the Working Families Tax Cuts, the beautiful bill, the most significant piece of legislation that Congress has considered in my lifetime. Stephen Miller had a quote that summarized pretty well. He said, “Each and every one of the individual titles in that bill would be considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of the conservative movement.” They are conservative policies, but they benefit every American and everyone will be seeing and feeling the effects of that in the first and second quarter of next year when all that becomes implemented. By way of reminder, the legislation included the largest tax cut in American history, permanent extension of the reduced estate tax, Medicaid program reforms, expansion of SNAP work requirements, increased border enforcement and funding, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, increase standard deduction for seniors, tax-free savings accounts for every child born in America, business tax provisions to incentivize investment and innovation and broaden the path we out of poverty for more people. Wages will be increasing and costs will be going down.
Many of these landmark provisions are set for implementation in the first, second quarter, as I said, and all boats will begin to rise. Just last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted $100 to $150 billion in new tax refunds, between $1,000 and $2,000 per household. And most of the estimates say that the average American household would have their take home pay increase by at least 10,000 bucks. These are real tangible benefits that this bill is going to offer tens of millions of American families. And we’re excited about what’s ahead. It’s just one more example of the many positive and transformational outcomes that we want to see going into the next year. So far, House Republicans have passed 413 bills this year. We’ve codified 68 of President Trump’s America first executive orders. We’ve repealed 23 Biden-era regulations under the Congressional Review Act resolutions. We clawed back billions in wasteful spending through Rescissions and opened numerous investigations into President Biden’s failed administration. And we look forward to continuing all of that work when we return in 2026.
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