Detroit News: How Michigan lawmakers voted on restoration of health insurance subsidies

Washington ― The Republican-controlled U.S. House passed a Democratic-led bill Thursday, 230-196, to reactivate enhanced insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for three years, with Michigan lawmakers voting along party lines.

The legislation is not expected to pass the Senate, which rejected similar legislation last month, though a bipartisan group of senators are still trying to work out a compromise to extend the subsidies with some reforms. A sticking point has been tax credits going to plans that cover abortion services.

Thursday's legislation comes after the plussed-up Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies expired at the end of 2025, more than doubling what some subsidized enrollees were paying annually for premiums on average — a 114% increase from an average of $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026, according to estimates by the policy research group KFF.

In Michigan, a family of four making $130,000 (about 400% of the federal poverty level) was predicted to see their ACA premiums increase by $9,092 a year without the enhanced subsidies to about $20,140, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And a 60-year-old Michigan couple making $80,000 a year would see their premiums go up by a whopping $19,500 to about $26,750, according to the group's estimates.

"These tax credit extensions are not the end-all solution when it comes to our health care system that is fundamentally broken," said U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Grand Rapids Democrat who has taken part in bipartisan talks to broker a compromise on the subsidies issue.

"But Congress has done what Congress does and kicked the can down the road. Now, we are in this situation where the only option we have is to extend them so that premiums don't rise sometimes 200% for certain Americans, such that health care becomes completely unaffordable, and individuals are forced to choose to go without it."

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, the Republican chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said extending the tax credits even in the short term is the wrong approach, and that Democrats are preoccupied with "prolonging a healthcare plan that doesn't work hasn't worked since 2010" when it was put into place.

"For Democrats to pontificate on us doing away with health care coverage is just an absolute lie," said Walberg, a Republican from Lenawee County. "It was them, the Democrats, that put that three-year sunset in (for the enhanced subsidies). They were the ones that passed the unaffordable Care Act initially, and it hasn't worked since it was was built."

Thursday's vote happened despite opposition from House GOP leadership who refused to put legislation on the floor for months last year to prevent the credits from expiring Dec. 31.

But a group of four vulnerable GOP lawmakers worried about political blowback for allowing the subsidies to go away signed onto a Democrat-led effort late last month to force consideration of the legislation by discharging it from committee to the floor.

All seven of Michigan's Republicans in the House voted no, while the six Democrats voted yes.

"Here's the thing: We have not rooted out the waste, fraud and abuse, which we are seeing in spades ― where you've got millions of people that have never made a claim and don't even know that they have been signed up for this," said U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, a Holland Republican.

"This rush to just throw money at a problem without fixing the root cause of the problem is just foolish, in my mind."

Asked if he'd support a compromise bill that might emerge from Senate talks, Huizenga said he'd look at it but noted only 6% to 7% of Americans are accessing health insurance through the ACA marketplaces.

"We have to fix the health care system for everybody else, for employers or self-employed people, all the folks that are absorbing all this," Huizenga said.

U.S. Rep. John James, a Shelby Township Republican who is running for governor this year, blamed soaring health insurance premiums on "tax-funded FRAUD" in a message on X, formerly Twitter.

"Democrats are flailing, selling your health & kids’ futures by extending COVID-era Obamacare handouts to billion-dollar insurers — for just 7% of Americans!" James wrote.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat, argued that Republicans in Congress have talked about overhauling the health care system or repealing the Affordable Care Act for over a decade without taking action. It's "cruel," she said, for GOP lawmakers now to make it harder for their constituents to get tax credits to blunt the high cost of health care.

Tlaib said she won't back the ACA reforms that Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has said are needed to pass a subsidies extension through the narrowly divided Senate, like mandating minimum premium payments, expanding health savings accounts and ensuring taxpayer money is not spent on abortion services.

"One of the things I think is really clear is how disconnected Thune is with the broad American people across the country who want a clean extension of the Affordable Care Act the way it was before. And let's move on," Tlaib said.

"He shouldn't hold the American people hostage right now."

The 2010 Affordable Care Act initially provided for tax credits to make health insurance premiums more affordable on the exchanges, but the enhanced credits now at risk date to the 2021 COVID relief package. 

That legislation made the tax credits bigger for people with lower incomes and also expanded eligibility to middle-income people with annual income equivalent to 400% of the federal poverty level. The credits helped to surge enrollment to a record 24 million people in 2025. That includes 530,000 enrollees in Michigan ― 90% of whom were able to get a reduced-cost plan, according to the state insurance department.

Rep. Tom Barrett, a Charlotte Republican, has said the enhanced subsidies are not real tax credits but checks that flow to big insurance companies and a relic of the COVID-19 relief package from six years ago, calling them a "deeply flawed approach to health care policy."

"A blanket extension of these subsidies is not the answer, especially since rampant waste fraud and abuse has continued to be uncovered," Barrett told a House committee last month, referring to high-earing households once eligible to claim the enhanced subsidies.

"It's clear that insurance companies have no incentive to keep Obamacare costs low ... mitigate fraud or anything else when taxpayer subsidies mean higher revenues for them. "

Barrett told The Detroit News on Thursday that he'd examine any bipartisan proposal on the subsidies that might come over from the Senate, but "I would want to make sure does not directly benefit the profitability exclusively of the insurance companies that have really made significant, illicit profits out of this."

Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Bay City Democrat, said health care costs are "breaking the backs" of her constituents who are already struggling with the higher cost of living.

"We are hearing about it literally every day in our office, people calling in tears about their health insurance and their inability to afford it and having to make these kinds of choices, like, are they going to just buy a policy that just covers their kids?" McDonald Rivet said.

"I talked to somebody who yesterday who had to go to health insurance plan that has a $20,000 deductible."

While the last vote on the ACA subsidies failed in the Senate, McDonald Rivet noted that was weeks ago. She is hopeful for the ongoing bipartisan talks, saying she's open to some of the proposed reforms under discussion like income caps and minimum premium payments but not restrictions for reproductive care. 

"The limits on reproductive rights is a poison pill. ... I’m a mom of 6 kids, four of them daughters. That’s a red line for me," she said. "But on the other issues, the idea of how can we do this differently? How can we do this better? We should be having those conversations."