Senate Keeps Failing to Address Obamacare Subsidies
Just repeal Obamacare and get out of health care.
I have a GREAT idea. This is absolutely insane, I know, but it might work.
How about we repeal Obamacare!?
No, instead the government wants to stay in health care.
As you know, the Obamacare subsidies will expire soon. Because Obamacare has made insurance so affordable that it needs subsidies!
Republicans’ Plan
Senate Democrats killed the Republican plan to replace the subsidies with health savings accounts (HSAs).
The vote was 51 to 48. It needed 60 votes to proceed.
U.S. Senate BLOCKS Crapo-Cassidy GOP bill to replace the expiring enhanced ACA subsidies with health savings accounts, 51-48. 60 votes were needed. pic.twitter.com/Puecovx61U
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 11, 2025
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also voted nay.
The plans from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) included “several reforms that Republicans appeared largely unified behind earlier this week.” From Fox News:
Cassidy and Crapo’s plan would have seeded HSAs with $1,000 for people ages 18 to 49 and $1,500 for those 50 to 65 for people earning up to 700% of the poverty level. In order to get the pre-funded HSA, people would have to buy a bronze or catastrophic plan on an Obamacare exchange.
It also included several provisions that didn’t make the cut in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” including measures to reduce federal Medicaid funding to states that cover illegal immigrants, requirements that states verify citizenship or eligible immigration status before someone can get Medicaid, a ban on federal Medicaid funding for gender transition services and nixing those services from “essential health benefits” for Obamacare exchange plans.
It also included Hyde Amendment provisions to prevent taxpayer dollars from funding abortions through the new HSAs, a red line for many Senate Republicans that has proven divisive between the aisles.
Democrats’ Plan
The Democrats’ plan also failed:
That proposal is also expected to fail, given that Senate Republicans broadly don’t want to extend the subsidies without myriad reforms.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats have pitched their plan as the only option to prevent healthcare premiums from skyrocketing, while Republicans contended that the subsidies are rife with fraud and that the entire Obamacare system was causing premium prices to crank up year after year.
“The Cassidy-Crapo [plan] is not a healthcare plan,” Schumer said. “It’s not a plan at all. It’s an excuse. It’s a fig leaf. Because Republicans are so divided and can’t come up with a plan that unites them. They propose this fig leaf.”
“My guess is most Republicans themselves are grimacing that they even have to vote for this thing,” he continued. “How is a one-time check going to help you if you’re paying 1,000 or $2,000 a month more for health insurance?”
U.S. Senate BLOCK Democrats' 3-year extension of the expiring enhanced ACA subsidies bill, 51-48. 60 votes were needed.
Republicans voting YEA:@SenatorCollins @HawleyMO @lisamurkowski @SenDanSullivan pic.twitter.com/hui5uPK2h2
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 11, 2025
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Comments
This is why a government run health care plan is a contradiction in terms. None of it will be free as envisioned by some since this is what offends some while others are offended that a plan might take away government control over people’s health care.
For once I agree, we need to stop throwing more money into the black hole called the unaffordable Care Act
I challenge all of the over-65 crowd complaining about government health insurance in the comments to decline their Medicare.
Hypocrites.
We are forced to pay into Medicare our entire lives, So, we are entitled to the benefits.
The people on Obamacare are being subsidized by everyone ELSE. Just pure redistribution.
It’s obscene.
No, you don’t. The funds are used immediately to pay for other government expenditures. The promise of providing services is gratuitous. You’re just paying your income taxes when you “pay” for Medicare. The illusion of payroll taxes “paying for” Social Security and Medicare benefits is an illusion designed to make people feel okay with taking welfare.
Even if you ignored this accounting reality, the amount purportedly taxed for Medicare is actuarially insufficient to pay for the services you actuarially expect to receive.
Yes. The Supreme Court ruled back in 1960 that Social Security is not a contract and the USA has no obligation to pay anyone anything. Congress could repeal Social Security tomorrow morning, and no one would be entitled to anything. So everyone who has paid FICA taxes since 1960 has been on notice that they were not “buying in” to anything, but were merely paying a tax like any other tax.
Sure Ill give up my Medicare.
But not only mine. Everybody else has to, as well.
Then I’ll happily let go.
Otherwise, I’m just a sucker and you’re a scammer.
Yes. Just because a program shouldn’t exist doesn’t change the fact that it does, and so long as it does it would be stupid not to take advantage of it. When a mugger takes pity on you and gives you back $20 from your wallet so you can take a cab home, you take it!
IMO the best way forward is to rip off the bandaid of gov’t subsidies and preferential tax treatment for some but not all health IN purchasing. Establish HSA, fund them, allow catastrophic care IN policies. End tax deductions for IN treating the ‘benefit’ as income. End Obama care, end Medicaid, use those funds to support rural hospitals, provide additional direct support for the minority of folks with super expensive conditions. Require transparency in pricing for hospitals, Pharmacies, medical providers which eliminates any ability to hide the cost of an item, procedure. IOW the charge is what it is no matter the IN company or if paid in cash; doesn’t matter if its an aspirin or an appendectomy there’s a single price for consumers at that provider. Let consumers shop around for price, quality, convenience the same way they do for most other things in our economy.
The situation is much more complex than you think.
“Establish HSA, fund them” This is essentially a government subsidy.
“End Obama care, end Medicaid” But don’t end Medicare? We oldsters like our government subsidies.
Health is uninsurable pretty much. You get insurance for a risk that you can’t afford, if it strikes, like house burning down. But you can afford your share of the risk along with houses that don’t burn down, to pay off the house that burns down.
Health insurance has to be for an expensive disease that you don’t die from right away, a somewhat narrow set. And then the insured risk has to be cut off at the top because you can’t afford paying for somebody else’s insanely expensive treatment that goes on forever, either. So you yourself are insured only against a range of expense, big but not too big. That’s sort of narrow. A better strategy in that range is just agree to die, which is what might happen to you in any case with some other disease.
So the right market is obscure.
Pure subsidizing is likely to be attractive except it hits the same limits, really.
Doctors used to do subsidizing by overcharging the rich to pay for the poor. That was back before filling out forms and legal penalties for being in business. A joke was the tough course in Med school was “presentation of the bill,” that being the bill to the rich.
do you have the slightest idea what you’re talking about
Government is making too much money on Obamacare, that is the dirty secret. The policy is accepted by almost no doctors or hospitals, it requires you to pay out $10’s k plus just to get to government kicking in, plus once you sign up you can never leave, why does no one ever put out the facts of Obama are?
What? Every single insurance plan in America is “Obamacare” because they all must comply with the ACA. Healthcare companies don’t care if you got your insurance coverage from your employer or independently; they just care who the insurance company is. Nor does the federal government make even a single cent from the ACA; you pay your money to the insurer and if anything the government pays a subsidy.
“The policy is accepted by almost no doctors or hospitals” this is false.
“it requires you to pay out $10’s k plus just to get to government kicking in” This is because the Republicans repealed the “risk corridor” subsidies.
It’s not a Government-Run Health Care Plan.
If you haven’t figured it out before now, please let me point out the obvious:
this is only one of the means that the Congress Lice you voted into office have of lining their pockets/nests; there is probably more theft of dollars from this program alone than from all the military programs combined.
At this point, I wouldn’t even mind calling in Putin’s (even Xi’s) people to investigate, prosecute, and take whatever measures are deemed appropriate.
The American people have been fleeced by our elected representatives long enough.
A one year extension of subsidies has been floated by RINO’s. This is sheer stupidity if passed because Dems will consider this a win and just keep pushing for more.
If obamacare were affordable you wouldn’t need subsidies. The government never makes anything cheaper.
Scrap it all, completely.
Look, realize this: none of the RINOs in Congress really want to kill Obamacare. If they did, they would have done it during the first two terms of Trump 1.0. They didn’t do it then, and — guess what? — they’re still not doing it now. Same as they don’t really want to regularize interstate firearms possession and carry.
Wise up and smell the coffee..
True. Which is why the go along/get along sorts get so upset with Rep Massie who votes against almost all the nonsense. Everyone who keeps arguing each GoP member of HoR and Senate must be a ‘team player’ has lost the plot.
For a constructive solution to the madness of “health insurance via employer”, check this out:
Dr. Rand Paul Introduces Bill to Expand Health Care Freedom for the Self-Employed and Small Businesses
https://www.paul.senate.gov/265528-2/