ATLANTA — Enhanced tax credits to help lower-income Americans afford health insurance have expired as the new year begins.
On Thursday, the subsidies expired, making the cost of health care an immediate concern for those currently enrolled in federal health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
The subsidies, originally created through the ACA, landmark healthcare legislation prioritized by former President Barack Obama, became a flashpoint in the most recent term of U.S. Congress.
Despite efforts to save the subsidies, or extend them until a more long-term solution was found, the ACA credits that helped reduce health insurance costs for enrollees expired.
In the lead up to the credits expiration, Democrats in both chambers of U.S. Congress forced the longest government shutdown in United States history.
More moderate members of the Republican Party, as well Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate had pushed for a solution but those efforts failed.
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The Associated Press reported that some enrollees in the ACA plans were able to get benefits with no premiums due to their lower-income status, while some higher earners paid up to 8.5% of their income.
An analysis on premium costs from healthcare nonprofit KFF showed that enrollees with the subsidies would see costs rise by 114% this year.
A separate analysis from the Urban Institute and commonwealth Fund from September predicted nearly five million people would lose or drop their health insurance due to the premium credits expiring.
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Channel 2’s Richard Elliot previously reported that in Georgia, almost 200,000 people chose not to reenroll in the state’s version of the ACA healthcare exchange and the number of new enrollees dropped by more than 100,000.
“A large drop like that, right now, is, I think, really concerning. It’s a bellwether for what’s coming,” Whitney Griggs, Health Policy Director for Georgians for a Healthy Future, told Channel 2 Action News in December. “Georgia’s premiums have increased almost 200%. The numbers that we hear from folks are staggering.”
Both of the state’s U.S. senators, Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, as well as soon-to-leave Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had pushed for the subsidies to either be extended or made permanent.
A vote in the U.S. House is expected this month but the chance for the effort to successfully preserve the tax credits is uncertain.
Without a legislative action to resume the credits or extend the ones that expired, premium costs for American health insurance plans are set to increase.
That means Americans who do not have Medicaid, Medicare or insurance through their workplace may become unable to afford maintaining health coverage.
In a Dec. 11 speech in the U.S. Senate, Ossoff urged his colleagues in both chambers of Congress to extend the tax credits while members of both parties worked to find a compromise for the healthcare subsidies.
“The whole conversation about these Affordable Care Act tax credits in this town and this building has been focused on the politics of this issue. This is life or death. People will die,” Ossoff warned.
Similarly, Warnock went after his Republican colleagues in the Senate for blocking what he called efforts to stop premiums from doubling for millions of Americans.
“First, you kick 15 million Americans off of their health care in order to give billionaires a tax cut. And then, after doing that, you double the premiums on some 22 million additional Americans. For some people, you triple the premiums, quadruple the premiums. Who are you working for?” Warnock said in December.
Greene also urged her colleagues in Congress to save the subsidies, warning about cost increases in October and expressing concern that the premium hikes would hit close to home.
While mentioning her problems with the ACA and its impacts to affordability for her families, Greene said previously that “when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to double, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.”
With Greene set to leave Congress on Jan. 5, having chosen to resign and not seek reelection, the Rome Republican said she was she would not toe the party line on the topic, but said she also wouldn’t vote to let migrants get taxpayer funded health benefits.
A nonprofit owner told Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes that her monthly premium for her family was set to more than double as well.
“I have a family budget that I work from - I don’t have an endless amount of money,” Kelli Stewart said previously. “This is not about politics. This is about peoples’ everyday life. This is about life and death.”
Stewart told Fernandes her premiums, for health coverage for her family of four, would rise from $1,500 per month to $3,100.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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