By Siobhan Hughes and Lindsay Wise
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said that he would hold a vote later this week on a Republican measure aimed at controlling healthcare costs, amid party division over how best to head off big price increases next year for millions of households.
Thune said Republicans have coalesced around legislation from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) and Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) that would put as much as $1,500 a year into tax-advantaged health savings accounts when paired with lower-priced insurance plans in 2026 and 2027. The proposal doesn't extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are due to expire after this year.
The measure aims to provide an alternative to a Democratic proposal that extends the ACA subsidies for three more years. Votes on the two plans in the GOP-controlled Senate are set for Thursday, as Thune follows through on a promise made to Democrats as a condition for ending the government shutdown last month.
"So there will be something out there that Republicans will be able to talk about and support and vote for, and then we'll see what happens Thursday," Thune said. If neither proposal gets the 60 votes required to advance in the Senate, he said, "then we'll see where it goes from there."
Democrats dismissed the Republican proposal as a nonstarter because it doesn't address the looming increase in premiums and because the payments -- of $125 a month for people at least 50 years old, or about $83 a month for younger people -- would go to health savings accounts paired with the ACA's catastrophic and bronze plans, which provide less coverage.
"Their phony proposal is dead on arrival," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). "Their bill is junk insurance."
The Cassidy-Crapo proposal also would give insurance companies money to finance certain mandatory discounts for low- and moderate-income consumers so that the cost doesn't get shifted onto other customers in the form of higher premiums. It would ban the funds from being used to cover abortion or gender-transition services.
The enhanced ACA subsidies were enacted in 2021 during the Covid pandemic and have attracted millions of consumers to the Affordable Care Act plans. Unless Congress acts, some middle- and upper-income people will lose the benefit entirely. Other households will still receive an ACA subsidy, but the size will revert to prepandemic levels, making their costs for healthcare increase.
Republicans generally oppose the ACA, which they have spent 15 years trying to curb or repeal, saying that the economics have never worked and that the GOP shouldn't have to save what they see as a failed program. They have spent the year working to roll back the law, including through cuts contained in President Trump's "big, beautiful bill," and don't want to undercut their own work by restoring the enhanced subsidies.
But with 24 million people enrolled in the Obamacare plans, a big chunk of the Republican Party says that some immediate government help is needed or else Republicans will be punished in the midterm elections next year.
While the Cassidy-Crapo plan doesn't extend the enhanced subsidies, other Republicans have backed short-term ACA extensions.
"We should have a basis for a bipartisan agreement," said Sen. Jon Husted (R., Ohio), who is up for re-election next year. He has introduced legislation to extend the subsidies for two years, while requiring everyone to pay at least something toward premiums and cutting off higher-income households from receiving the benefit.
Write to Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 09, 2025 16:28 ET (21:28 GMT)
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