Cutting Spending Is Hard

On Thursday, Fox News reported that seventeen Republicans voted to extend the ‘temporary’ Obamacare subsidies for another three years. These are the ‘temporary’ subsides put in place during Covid. The only justification for the Republicans who voted for this is that they are in liberal districts and fear that they will lose in the mid-terms if they end the subsidies. This illustrates how citizens can raid the treasury and how that impacts elections. Hopefully the bill will not pass in the Senate. Premiums for Obamacare are increasing, but the solution is not to pay the insurance companies–it’s to fix the problems with Obamacare.

The article reports:

The vast majority of Republicans believe the subsidies are a COVID-era relic of a long-broken federal healthcare system. Conservatives argued that the relatively small percentage of Americans who rely on Obamacare meant that an extension would do little to ease rising health costs that people across the country are experiencing.

But a core group of moderates has been arguing that a failure to extend a reformed version of them would force millions of Americans to grapple with skyrocketing healthcare costs this year.

Those moderates were also frustrated with Jeffries for not working with Republicans on a bipartisan solution to the subsidies but felt they were left with little choice but to support Democrats’ bid in the end.

Unless someone stands their ground, the subsidies will continue forever, and Americans will wonder why the government keeps taking more of their money and insurance companies get richer.

The article concludes:

House Republicans passed a healthcare bill in mid-December aimed at lowering those costs for a broader swath of Americans, but that legislation has not been taken up in the Senate.

There’s also little chance the three-year extension will pass the upper chamber, however. Similar legislation led by Senate Democrats failed to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold to advance in December.