Las Vegas Sun: With shutdown over, Nevada congressional delegation reengages on health care fix

Nevada’s congressional delegation is warming up to potential compromises to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that were at the heart of the recently ended government shutdown.

Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of U.S. House representatives proposed setting new income caps on the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits to extend them for two years. Without the subsidies, millions of people’s premium costs will at least double, according to the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

U.S. Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., wouldn’t definitively back an income cap without specifics, but she told the Sun she’s “willing to look at” them. The bipartisan framework also includes guardrails on fraud, a policy Lee similarly brought up while speaking to the Sun.

House and Senate Democrats largely withheld their votes for the Republican-led funding package during the shutdown because it did not address the health care subsidies expiring at the end of the year.

Nevada’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto were part of a group of Senate Democrats whose votes ultimately helped end the longest-ever government shutdown. But they did so without securing the credits’ extension.

That deal included a promise to vote in December on extending the credits. Part of the intent of that agreement, Cortez Masto said, was to “get us in a room and talk” with their Republican colleagues.

Cortez Masto believes “there is room for us to work together and figure out” if there are reforms that keep access to health care open. Pressed on the income caps, Cortez Masto said she wouldn’t go over potential deals “piece by piece.”

Rosen wrote in a joint column in the Sun with Cortez Masto that she believed the credits could be extended and that there were some Republicans willing to work across the aisle. The December vote, the senators added, will “force Republicans to go on record about the issue.”

Lee said there were Republicans looking to compromise, but she added that she was skeptical of the deal her colleagues reached. In a news release detailing her opposition to some Senate Democrats’ plan, she wrote that the proposed vote in December would “likely fail.”

“They have no intention of extending them cleanly,” Lee said of Republicans, adding later that she’s worried they will “start to whittle away at protections for preexisting conditions and protecting children up to the age of 26 who are on their parents’ insurance.”

Regardless, the clock is ticking with much of the government set to run out of funding at the end of January. If Congress doesn’t pass a spending bill by then, federal workers will be staring down another government shutdown.

Senate Democrats have more of an ability to slow down Republicans, who would again need a handful of Democrats defecting to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.

Lee emphasized the effect of the subsidies expiring, noting that a local single mom is looking at health insurance premiums skyrocketing from $85 to $700 a month. Those who pay the inflated price, likely will be cutting back spending on food and other purchases while going into credit card debt, she said.

Not extending the enhanced premium tax credits, established in 2021, is going to have a “devastating” impact on individuals and families, Cortez Masto said. Her Republican colleagues also understand the stakes, she said.