Republicans are ready to revive stalled health care legislation. Dems want the GOP to pay a price.

Source: Politico

07/21/2025 04:45 AM EDT


Republicans are eyeing an opportunity to enact a bipartisan health package by the end of the year, but Democrats aren’t exactly in a deal-making mood.

With the dust barely settled after enacting their party-line domestic policy megabill, GOP lawmakers on the Senate Finance, House Ways and Means and House Energy and Commerce committees are hoping they’ll have another shot this year at making policy changes to drug pricing long sought by both parties. It will be a litmus test for whether lawmakers can come together during President Donald Trump’s polarizing second term — and in the aftermath of the enactment of the Republican megabill, which included the steepest cuts to Medicaid in the program’s history.

Democrats are already suggesting Republicans may have poisoned the well and are countering by playing hardball. One particular demand they’re making as a condition of engagement: a costly extension of expanded tax credits for Affordable Care Act insurance premiums that are set to expire at the end of the year.

The tax credits, which Democrats enacted over Republican objections during the Biden administration, reduced the cost of insurance on the 2010 health law exchanges for millions of middle- and upper-income people for the first time. Extending them will will be a tough pill to swallow for Republicans now, too — particularly in the House, where Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith of Missouri recently suggested it could be a nonstarter for his conference.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/21/republicans-democrats-health-package-00463980