December 11, 2025
All the Democrats and Independents voted yes to extend the subsidies for three more years– plus three Republican Senators, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lisa Murkowshi of Alaska.
The one senator not present and not voting today was Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana.
The only yes votes on this plan were from Republican Senators. All the no votes came from Democrats and Independents plus Republican Senator Rand Paul. The Senator not present and not voting today was Senator Daines of Montana.
This Republican plan would have allowed those affordable care act enhanced premium subsidies to expire at the end of 2025. And instead of the subsidies – the government would deposit $1000 in a health savings account to only qualified ACA members on certain plans so the recipient can use that money to pay for the ballooning cost of healthcare. And even though this is the only real concrete plan that republicans have put forward to fix this looming healthcare catastrophe – not even all the Republicans in the Senate were on board with it.
So now what? Well – it’s obvious that the Republican leadership and the Democrat leadership and even the president are not taking this healthcare issue seriously. They’re all blaming each other for the fact that 24 million Americans are about to see their healthcare costs skyrocket 30, 50 150% on December 31st.
It is no secret that that Republicans hate the affordable care act. They generally hate these subsidies and they always say how awful the program is. But at the same time they aren’t offering a solution. They’re just like oh well…
And it’s also no secret that when the Democrats were in the majority they could have at least tried to make these subsidies permanent. They didn’t because the expiration of the subsidy was part of a compromise they made with republicans in 2021 and 2022 to pass the laws that included the subsidy.
The reality is – it’s highly unlikely that there is going to be a deal on healthcare before the end of 2025 – so if you have ACA health insurance you should just brace yourself for a huge bill in January. And if you’re not on the ACA– you should brace yourself for extremely busy and overwhelmed emergency rooms and looooong wait times because millions of people won’t be able to afford health insurance so instead of seeing their primary care doctor when they’re sick – they’re going to be clogging up hospital emergency rooms.
Vote count for GOP plan here.
Vote count for Democratic plan here.
