Johnson: Democrats 'broke the system' of U.S. health care

By Thérèse Boudreaux
The Center Square

Republican leaders in Congress remain firmly opposed to any health care plan that renews the pandemic-era expansion of Obamacare subsidies, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said this week.

“Health care is a very complex issue. And I want to point this out, it is not the Republicans who broke American health care,” Johnson told reporters. “The Democrats broke health care when they created the unaffordable care act 15 years ago...They broke the system, and every time the Democrats have gone in to try to subsidize the broken system, they’ve spent more and more taxpayer dollars and they’ve been wasted.”

Health care talks have intensified over the past few months, and Democrats even shut down the government for 43 days over demands that Congress extend the enhanced Obamacare Premium Tax Credit.

Established under the ACA and temporarily expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the PTC is a subsidy that goes directly to health insurance companies, which use 80% of it to lower ACA marketplace enrollees’ monthly premiums. Insurance companies are allowed to keep 20% of the money for overhead costs and profit.

The subsidy is set to revert to original, pre-pandemic levels in less than a month, which will partially contribute to Affordable Care Act Marketplace enrollees’ monthly plan payments rising in 2026.

Republicans said the subsidies benefit insurers over patients, and that the expansion of the PTC enabled increased fraud and did little to lower premiums. Extending the enhanced subsidy would also cost at least $350 billion over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Johnson said Republican lawmakers are “pulling ideas together,” and will “build consensus deliberately around the best ideas” before bringing alternative health policy legislation to the House floor. 

“I can’t project in advance what that will be because I don’t know what the consensus is in that room. But you will see our sleeves being rolled up and that work being done in earnest this week as we bring all that together,” he added. “We’re going to improve the system for Americans and we have good ideas to do it. We have a lot of thoughtful people working on this.”

Democrats have criticized Republicans for thus far failing to introduce any legislation with substantial, concrete health care reforms, even as open enrollment has already started.

The Speaker’s comments come after he tanked an unreleased proposal from the White House that would have combined a two-year subsidy extension with some other health policies that Republicans would support. Johnson views any PTC extension as “doubling down on the broken system.”