WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Thursday rejected competing proposals by Republicans and Democrats to address a looming health care crisis, leaving some 24 million Americans vulnerable to significantly higher insurance premiums beginning on January 1 when a federal subsidy expires.
Barring any late breakthroughs, Congress will begin an end-of-year holiday recess sometime next week and not return until January 5, after new premiums are locked in for those who had relied on the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidy.
In back-to-back votes largely along party lines, Democrats and Republicans blocked each other’s bill.
The House of Representatives might attempt to pass some sort of legislation next week, which has not yet been unveiled. Even if it were to pass, Senate Democrats, and possibly some Republicans, would oppose it and they could use their votes to kill that effort.
“After today’s vote, the American health care crisis is 100 percent on their shoulders,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said of Republicans.
Senate Republican leader John Thune dismissed the Democratic bill as “a political messaging exercise” and said “Republicans are ready to get to work. I’m not sure yet that Democrats are interested.”
The bitter battle in Congress has left some Americans uncertain over renewing their health insurance under the federal health care program.
The percentage of returning customers in the Obamacare exchanges is slightly down from a year ago, with the government reporting 19.9 percent of people enrolled this year opting to renew their plans so far, down from 20.5 percent this time last year.
The Republican bill by US Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mike Crapo of Idaho would have sent up to $1,500 to individuals earning less than 700 percent of the federal poverty level — about $110,000 for an individual or $225,000 for a family of four in 2025. Those funds could not be used for abortion or gender transition procedures and would require verification of beneficiaries’ immigration or citizenship status — provisions Democrats reject.
The Democratic proposal on the subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, would have extended COVID-era subsidies for three years to keep insurance premiums from soaring for many. Without action by Congress, those premiums could more than double in cost on average, according to KFF, a health policy organization.
Sixty votes were needed to pass either measure in a Senate that Republicans control 53-47. Four Republicans voted for the Democratic proposal. No Democrats backed the Republicans’ bill.
President Donald Trump has largely sat out the brawl over health care, although he ultimately embraced the Cassidy-Crapo approach.
At Thursday’s bipartisan Congressional Ball, Trump predicted Republicans and Democrats would work together on health care. But he advocated for the Republican bill.
“We have an idea that rather than making these massive payments... insurance companies, we make beautiful big payments directly to the people, and they buy their own,” Trump said in remarks at the black-tie event at the White House.
The $1,500 payments in the Republican bill were meant to cover some of the out-of-pocket costs that people in the “Bronze” or “Catastrophic” categories — the lower-cost Obamacare plans — need to pay before their insurance kicks in.
However, it is far below the plans’ deductibles, meaning that even after that payment, a patient would be on the hook for up to $7,500 in out-of-pocket medical expenses before their insurance would start to pay for part of their care.
Those costs can rack up quickly for people with lower-cost plans, with a visit to a US emergency room costing between $1,000 and $3,000, while an ambulance ride can cost anywhere from $500 to over $3,500.
With 2026 congressional elections coming into focus, many Republicans are nervous about the prospect of stiff premium increases hitting every state, including many that backed Trump’s 2024 re-election. Polling indicates voters could mostly punish Republicans, who control Congress and the White House.
Republican US Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a state that Trump carried by 18 points in his 2024 re-election, said his constituents have been telling him, “We can’t afford our premiums now, let alone if they would go up by 50 or 100 percent.”
Insurance companies warned customers of the rising premiums in the new year, and Democrats argued there was not enough time to do anything but a clean extension of the tax credits they sought.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found Americans back a health care subsidy continuation. Some 51 percent of respondents — including three-quarters of Democrats and a third of Republicans — said they support extending the subsidies. Only 21 percent said they were opposed.
Moderate Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania is spearheading a bipartisan bill to extend the subsidy through 2027. He is hoping to garner enough support to circumvent leadership and force votes on the measure by the full House.
Obamacare health subsidy to end as US Senate rejects dueling remedies
https://arab.news/4a32v
Obamacare health subsidy to end as US Senate rejects dueling remedies
- Senate rejects Republican and Democratic health care proposals
- Democratic plan sought subsidy extension; Republicans offered to boost health savings accounts
Trump takes unconventional approach to communicating to the public about war in Iran
- The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war
Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.
President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.
The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president’s media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.
The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the US against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a missile attack that killed nine people. The Israeli military has held multiple press briefings each day.
“The American people need a commander in chief, and he has been absent in that role,” Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said on CNN Monday. Emanuel, a Democrat, is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028.
An unconventional strategy leads to criticism
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”
That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”
The calls included one with Baker’s colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump’s mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.
Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico’s Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn’t hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.
“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”
The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN’s Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
Hegseth briefing concentrates on friendly reporters
Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth’s briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth’s rules restricting their work.
Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News’ Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he’s wrong?”
Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We’re going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve.”
Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth’s former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.
