Democrats are fighting efforts to reduce the skyrocketing costs of Obamacare while gaslighting Americans on the failures of COVID-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies, Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) told Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.
The chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), Pfluger told the Alex Marlow Show that the committee’s members do not support enriching insurance companies through premium subsidies that must first wastefully pass through the corporations before trickling to the ratepayers.
“No, we don’t, as the Republican Study Committee, support these. We think that it is giving a blank check to the insurance companies,” Pfluger told Marlow. “We know that there’s a correlation between this blank check approach and raising the premiums.”
Obamacare’s rising premiums aren’t just rhetoric, but fact, Pfluger explained. Even as heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars as Obamacare has been, the premiums continue to rise by design.
“Premiums are going up. That’s 100 percent that’s the way they designed the program. Obamacare, and premiums, and the cost of health care will go up,” he said, adding:
They’ve done it year over year. You can go back to the first passage of Obamacare and the subsidies that were introduced thereafter. And as recent as 2021 by the way, Democrats tried to make this permanent. They tried to pass permanence of the covid-era emergency subsidies, and they couldn’t do it. Not even Democrats could stomach it. So for fiscal reasons, for structural reasons, we don’t support it, but we do support and we have plans that will bring the cost of premiums down and the cost of these healthcare plans down.
Democrats have latched onto the covid-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which expire December 31, wielding the expiration as a political cudgel and fighting efforts to reform and improve the program. But much of the fearmongering over the issue ignores the facts, Pfluger said.
“Ninety percent of the subsidies will remain in place regardless of what we do. They’re locked in. They’re permanent,” Pfluger told Marlow. “So we’re talking about just the top 10% of these subsidies.”
Republicans have ideas to make substantive changes to improve the healthcare system instead of merely propping it up. The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act would:
- Increase transparency for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)
- Appropriate funding for cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that would lower premiums
- Expand access to Association Health Plans (AHPs) that would allow self-employed workers and other membership-based organizations such as Costco, Amazon, or Sam’s Club to create their own health insurance pools
- Ensure small- and mid-sized employers can protect themselves from catastrophic claims
- Codify first Trump term-era rules that would allow employers to offer defined contributions to employees to purchase their own health insurance.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – historically hostile to Republican legislative ideas, particularly on health care – found on Tuesday that the House Republican healthcare reform package, which is slated for a vote Wednesday, lowers premiums by 11 percent and would save $35.6 billion.
Pfluger also has introduced his own legislation, first reported by Breitbart News, called the More Affordable Care Act (MACA), introduced with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).
Yet even though the Democrats own Obamacare’s failures – “not a single Republican the last 15 years had voted for any Democrat plan on health care,” Pfluger reminded listeners – Democrats have pinned high healthcare costs on Republicans and worked to make it the primary issue in the 2026 and 2028 elections.
Despite Trump winning all seven swing states in the 2024 election focusing on issues like immigration, crime, and raising wages for American workers, Republicans have boxed themselves in by allowing Democrats to elevate and shape the narrative on this issue. And they’ll need an answer.
“Look, that’s the challenge,” Pfluger acknowledged regarding how to fight the political battle on the issue. He added:
They designed this system, they voted for it. We didn’t. They know the cost is going up. They understand that very well, and so being able to surgically remove some of the impediments to lowering costs and increasing transparency and competition is our challenge, and we really need true structural reform to it. And the provisions [in the Republican bill] are a start to that. It’s not all of it, but it is a start to it.
I would also point in the direction of, look at the jobs that were added to the economy this week, the things that we did in the tax bill. If we had not passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill, Americans would have seen the largest tax increase in the history of this country. But we did, and real money will be flowing back to every American as a result of that. We have to communicate that in 2026. It has to be at the forefront of everyone’s minds that the work that we’ve done for the economy was positive, and it resulted in more money being put back into people’s pockets, not just on health care, but for every aspect of their lives.
Thus far, the White House has been content to let Congress hash out a path forward on health care. But Pfluger predicted Trump will get involved at some point.
“I think he will,” Pluger told Marlow. “I mean, he’s a businessman. He’s focused on affordability. That’s been his whole mantra, is increasing our economy and strengthening our economy. He’s an employer himself. I mean, he was in the service industry, so he knows very well the challenges that Americans are facing. So I do think that, and he has been involved to a large extent. Look at the One Big, Beautiful Bill — he was involved in every aspect of it. So I do think he will.”
The Alex Marlow Show, hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
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