Crapo: We Cannot Spend Our Way Out of Rising Health Care Premiums

Crapo: We Cannot Spend Our Way Out of Rising Health Care Premiums

"If my colleagues want to have a conversation about reforms that truly lower costs, Republicans are willing to have that conversation."

Washington, D.C.-Today on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) implored his Democrat colleagues to join Republicans in voting to reopen the government and highlighted the negative impact the shutdown is having on existing health care services. He also set the record straight on what is truly driving health care premiums to increase and noted extending temporary, expensive, pandemic-era subsidies will do nothing to address the root causes of rising health care premiums.

Watch Chairman Crapo's remarks HERE.

On why premiums are increasing:

"Insurance premiums are skyrocketing because our health care system is broken and needs to be fixed. We've been asking to negotiate about this for years and intensely so over the last few months. Let me give some specifics. This demand that my colleagues on the Democrat side are making-that we extend the temporary enhanced COVID health care tax credit and it will solve the problem-it's only four percentage points of the premium increases that are coming."

On Congress's responsibility to fund the government:

"Congress has a timely bipartisan obligation to reopen the government. The proposal offered by my colleague on the other side of the aisle does not address that. The Senate has now voted fourteen times-fourteen times-to end this shutdown.

"My Democrat colleagues claim to be taking a stand to make health care more affordable. While we may disagree on the merits of those individual policies, everyone in this chamber shares that goal.

"In fact, as a part of the clean [continuing resolution] CR that we have voted on fourteen times to extend critical Medicare and Medicaid programs, we would have increased payments to rural hospitals. We would have provided access to telehealth services for our seniors. We would have offered our seniors the option to receive hospital-level services in their homes. But no, not unless we agree to spend hundreds of billions of dollars extending what were made temporary by my Democrat colleagues when they controlled the Senate."

On the need to address Obamacare's failures:

"Despite the confusion that has been created here, the original Obamacare subsidies don't expire. Let's make that very clear: the only things expiring are temporary COVID-related enhancements that the Democrats themselves made temporary. The Democrats are the ones who set the expiration date that we are debating today.

"Even without extending these COVID enhancements, taxpayers will spend $1 trillion over the next 10 years subsidizing Obamacare premiums. So let's not tell the American people that the American government is going to stop subsidizing the failed Obamacare premium system.

"We cannot spend our way out of rising premiums. If my colleagues want to have a conversation about reforms that truly lower costs, instead of masking the problems with a $100 to $350 billion taxpayer-funded patch, then Republicans are willing to have that conversation."