KEY VOTE: “NO” on Expansion of COVID-Era Obamacare Subsidies

Heritage Action opposes House Democrats' proposal for a 3-year expansion of COVID-era Obamacare subsidies (H.R. 1834, as amended) and will include this bill as a key vote on our legislative scorecard.

Starting when Democrats first rammed through their disastrous Obamacare bill under President Obama, Republicans have consistently made clear it is fatally flawed. The skyrocketing premiums and deductibles that we see today in the Obamacare exchanges were fully predictable outcomes of the destructive system Democrats created.

Enrollees have fewer choices than ever before, and plans are becoming even more restrictive. Democrats now want to keep up the guise of lower premiums by throwing more corporate welfare at insurers, who have no incentive to lower prices. They first did this under the cover of COVID, then by more explicitly partisan means, both times through reconciliation.

H.R. 1834, as amended to swap in House Democrats’ 3-year COVID-era Obamacare subsidy bill, restores the now-expired subsidy expansion and masks the underlying rot in the system. Conservatives need to ensure that the policy debate on health care is centered on real solutions to make American health care affordable again, rather than restoring COVID-era subsidies and propping up the failing Obamacare system.

As congressional Republicans made crystal clear during the 2025 shutdown, to make health care more affordable, policy changes need to fix what is wrong with Obamacare and provide relief to those not covered by it, including the 160 million Americans covered by employer and union plans.

Heritage Action stands ready to work with lawmakers to take on the health care industrial complex and give Americans have more control over how and where they spend their health care dollars.