Dear friend, it’s your Congresswoman, Gwen Moore. As we continue to discuss the conservatives’ budget bill, I also want to make you aware of what wasn’t included. The conservative budget bill doesn’t provide extensions of the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits, which have made health care more affordable for millions, saving people an average of $705 annually.
This year, 24 million individuals were able to afford access to high quality health care through the ACA’s health exchanges. The ACA health exchanges offer people without access to Medicaid or affordable employer coverage quality, affordable private plans. The federal government provides premium tax credits to lower out-of-pocket premiums.
The number enrolling in health care through the ACA health exchanges has increased dramatically in recent years (nearly doubling since 2021 in the states that use healthcare.gov), thanks to the hard work of the Biden Administration, and legislative changes that have made health care more affordable on those exchanges.
In 2021 and 2022, the Democratic-majority Congress made changes to ACA premium subsidies, first in the American Rescue Plan Act and again in the Inflation Reduction Act, that allow these credits to lower health care costs for more people. And those changes have been extremely effective. Of the record 266,000 Wisconsinites who got their coverage through the ACA, 231,000 benefited from the premium tax credits in 2024 alone.
These credits will expire at the end of this year and I have joined a number of colleagues in cosponsoring legislation, the Health Care Affordability Act, to permanently extend them.
If the conservative majority in Congress doesn’t act, health care costs will go up for many Americans. Estimates show that premium payments could go up as much as 75 percent!
With families already struggling with the high cost of living, these premium increases will squeeze Americans even more, especially low-income Americans. For too many, this will mean forgoing health care altogether. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that failing to extend these ACA premium tax credit will cause 4.2 million people to lose their health care by 2034.
And these are not the only attacks on ACA by this conservative majority and Administration. Their reconciliation bill (H.R. 1) ends the ability for folks to be automatically enrolled in ACA plans, among other changes and a Trump Administration rule that is estimated to also make it harder to enroll or afford care on the ACA exchanges and that analysts believe may cause two million Americans to lose coverage through the Marketplaces in 2026.
The conservative-majority Congress should prioritize lowering costs, not allowing health care costs to skyrocket for our constituents.
As your Congresswoman, I will always work to make health care affordable and accessible and will keep pushing for these credits to be renewed.
Our Office is Here to Help
As always, my office is here to help. If you are a resident of WI-04 and need assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to my district office 414-297-1140.
Your friend,
Gwen
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