This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
Colorado’s U.S. House members split along party lines on a limited Republican health care bill that passed the House on Wednesday, 216-211. It heads to the Senate, where it is not expected to pass.
Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd voted for the package, while Democratic Reps. Jason Crow, Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen voted against it.
The Republican package did not include an extension of the enhanced premium tax credit, which has helped about 225,000 Coloradans buy health insurance on the marketplace or an expansion of health savings accounts, which Senate Republicans had pushed.
Instead, it focused on a few narrow proposals that conservatives have been pushing for years, including reforms for pharmacy benefit managers and opening up access to association health plans, which do not have to cover essential benefits and which Democrats have referred to as junk plans. It would also provide cost-sharing subsidies to lower the cost of insurance. (During the first Trump administration, the government got rid of the subsidy and it caused health insurers to inflate the cost of Silver plans.)
Evans, whose 8th Congressional District is north of Denver, supported his party’s proposal.
“We’ve got to be able to fix health care to make it affordable for everybody, and that’s what this Republican plan is doing,” Evans said.
He pointed to the cost-sharing reductions as an example, pointing out that the Congressional Budget Office said it would reduce the cost of benchmark plans for ACA. A recent CBO estimate said gross benchmark premiums would reduce by 11 percent, on average, through 2035. The same estimate said the Republican Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act would see, on average, 100,000 people per year lose health insurance over 10 years.
Neguse, whose 2nd Congressional District spans from part of the Western Slope to Boulder and Larimer counties, panned the plan. He said Republicans “finally put forward an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. This is it — junk plans and insurance premiums that would increase over time and hundreds of thousands of Americans that would lose the health care access that they so vitally need.”
While Congress will leave town still without an agreement on the tax credit that expires at the end of the year, the House will likely come back in the new year to vote on a possible extension of the tax credit.
Hours before the vote on the Republican bill, four Republicans broke ranks and signed onto a discharge petition that would force a vote on a clean three year extension of the enhanced premium tax credit.
The four Republicans, New York Rep. Mike Lawler and Pennsylvania Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan, and Ryan Mackenzie, represent swing seats and were frustrated by their leadership’s refusal to bring up any extensions with reforms as an amendment vote.
Bipartisan talks are also taking place in the Senate, with a group meeting with the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus on the issue Wednesday afternoon.
For some Coloradans, it may be too late. Open season for insurance starting January 1 has closed, but they have until mid-January to decide on insurance starting February 1.
