As Republicans in Congress debate whether to extend COVID-19-era health care premium tax credits, a prominent conservative organization is warning lawmakers not to abandon pro-life priorities.
The Advancing American Freedom Foundation memorandum, titled “How Obamacare Subsidies Pay for Abortions,” lays out a loophole in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, which allows for taxpayer dollars to subsidize abortions.
“While the legislative text of [Obamacare] says that an insurance plan ‘shall not use any amount attributable’ to the federal tax credit to pay for abortion services, the legislation allows subsidies to fund plans that cover abortions,” it reads.
“As written today, D.C. and 25 states allow ACA plans to cover abortions … This state loophole makes the existing abortion funding restrictions toothless,” it adds.
Advancing American Freedom was founded by former Vice President Mike Pence.
At the end of the year, COVID-19-era boosts to premium tax credit levels passed under President Joe Biden are set to expire.
House Republican leadership’s new bill, set to hit the floor this week, would allow the expiring enhanced credit levels to revert back to pre-COVID-19 levels. The baseline credit would remain.
House and Senate Democrats, as well as handful of Republicans in both chambers, have expressed support for a clean short-term extension of the current credits.
But there are some Republican proposals to overhaul the premium tax credit system, many of which involve create flexible health savings accounts equivalent to the benefits of the credits.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., told The Daily Signal Tuesday that he still supports instituting flexible health savings accounts as an alternative to premium tax credits, despite this not being in his current health care package.
It’s “very much on the table. The president likes the policy as well,” Johnson told The Daily Signal. “I think we could get broad consensus on that.”
Johnson also previewed a potential budget reconciliation bill—a type of legislation that only requires a simple majority in both chambers—to tackle the issue.
“What we anticipate going into the first quarter of next year is—possibly in a reconciliation package, or in regular order, stand-alone—ideas just like this,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance also told The Daily Signal on Tuesday at a rally in Pennsylvania that he would favor an overhaul of the Obamacare premium tax credit system.
“We have the weirdest health care system in the world where we tax money from all of these great Americans out here, and then we give boatloads of money to the insurance companies,” he told The Daily Signal. “Why don’t we give that money to the American people and let them buy insurance that works for them and their families?”
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell contributed to this report.
