Shaheen Delivers Remarks Outlining Devastating Impacts If Affordable Care Act Premium Tax Credits Expire: “The Clock is Ticking.”
**Click HERE to watch Shaheen’s remarks at a Senate press conference on the need to make permanent the premium tax credits that millions of Americans rely on for affordable health care coverage**
(Washington, DC) – Today, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), lead of the bicameral Health Care Affordability Act to permanently extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits, delivered remarks alongside her Senate colleagues about the consequences of allowing the vital tax credits to expire at the end of this year. In her remarks, Shaheen argued that refusing to extend the credits will raise prices and take away health care from families who need the help at a time when many are already struggling with high costs. Click HERE to watch the Senator’s full remarks.
Remarks as delivered:
I want to speak just to the enhanced premium tax credits that are going to expire at the end of this year. Because what did not happen when our Republican majority passed the reconciliation bill is, they did not extend those premium tax credits.
And refusing to extend these highly-effective tax credits means that health care coverage is being actively taken away from families who really need the help. It means raising costs for millions of Americans at a moment when they’re already struggling with increased costs.
And that pain, as Senator Wyden said, is being felt almost immediately. Because insurance companies are looking at having to submit their rates, and they are increasing their rates.
Premiums will increase for 20 million Americans. A typical family of four would see a ten-thousand-dollar increase when those premium tax credits go away, and a typical 60-year-old couple would see a seventeen-thousand-dollar increase.
So, think about that. Parents, grandparents are going to see a seventeen-thousand-dollar increase.
And because of those costs, Americans are gonna lose their health care coverage. The non-partisan data shows us that four million Americans will lose their health care, more than a million of them suffer from a chronic illness. So if they don’t have health insurance, who’s gonna pay for that coverage to make sure they get their treatment? Well, everybody’s gonna pay for it.
And that’s on top of the unprecedented health care cuts to Medicaid that were passed in that bill.
I heard from one of my constituents, Jen in North Conway, New Hampshire. North Conway is a small community in the eastern part of New Hampshire. Her story, I think, shows just how important these tax credits are.
Because Jen was diagnosed with leukemia. She started getting chemotherapy to treat it. And she was able to, because of the Family and Medical Leave Act, she was able to take time off from her job for three months. But then, because FMLA ended, she lost her job. And when she lost her job, she lost her health coverage.
Her husband had to act as her caregiver, but then he had to get back to work. And his employer did not provide health insurance.
But the way Jen was able to continue her chemotherapy was because she and her husband were able to afford health insurance under the Affordable Care Act because of those premium tax credits.
They lowered Jen’s premiums by seven hundred dollars per month and they allowed her to continue her chemo treatments.
Look, when the reconciliation bill was debated and we saw the tax breaks for the wealthiest and the big corporations, a lot of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle didn’t think seven hundred dollars a month was very much money.
But I can tell you, for Jen and her husband, seven hundred dollars savings each month – eight thousand dollars a year – is the difference between being able to continue to have the health care they need, to continue putting food on the table, continue to pay their rent and losing all of that.
But most important, the tax credits were there when she needed them – when she got sick and could no longer work.
The clock is ticking.
We first introduced the legislation on this issue back in 2019.
We’ve succeeded in securing temporary extensions that have helped fuel record enrollment in the Affordable Care Act.
But we’re approaching another deadline and we need to take action now to permanently extend those tax credits and to end the back-and-forth every year so people know they can count on them.
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