A Democratic bill proposing a three-year Affordable Care Act tax credit extension failed on the Senate floor today. The current subsidies will expire by January 1st. Senator Bennett said today that failing to pass the bill means an enormous spike in Americans' healthcare costs.
"We are three weeks away from the end of the extended Affordable Care Act tax credits, three weeks away. Those tax credits are a lifeline for Coloradans without them, their health insurance. Premiums are likely to double, triple, or even quadruple in 2026."
During his first run for office, President Trump promised to repeal Obamacare and replace it with his own plan for federal healthcare. So far no such plan has been revealed.
"The bill on the Senate floor doesn't even incorporate things that Republicans in the House have been willing to consider in terms of extensions, and calling this a solution in any way is an insult to the American people. It's a cynical political act, and it's not a solution. And Coloradans deserve far better. And I just want to remind everybody that since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Congressional Republicans have attempted 70 times to repeal it and have promised over and over and over again that they were going to replace it. Today, we know that they have absolutely no plan to replace it, nor does Donald Trump."
The opportunity to pass any kind of relief or extension in 2025 has passed, and while the legislature could try again next year, Bennet thinks there will already be damage to Americans' finances.
"I think anything that we do now is going to be much later than it should have been, and people's expectations and their plans for the future are all being disturbed right now because they don't have the predictability that they need to be able to make the decisions."
Bennet believes that a large number of voters believe the current healthcare system is broken and that they would benefit from universal healthcare at half the current cost, but he did not go into detail.
