Democrats broke America’s healthcare system. Republicans are working to fix it
By U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington
December 18, 2025
AS SEEN IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Long before Democrats created the worst cost-of-living crisis in a half-century, they gave us the “Unaffordable Care Act.” Their attempt at central planning, 20% of the U.S. economy, resulted in a government-dominated healthcare system that is unaffordable and unsustainable. Now, they are demanding Republicans bail them out by extending their COVID-era, fraud-ridden Obamacare subsidy expansion.
Democrats’ COVID-era subsidies, called “enhanced premium tax credits,” are neither enhanced nor premium — unless you’re an insurance company. They are a toxic combination of Obamacare’s broken model and liberal COVID-era spending. Originally designed to be temporary, they now funnel subsidies to households earning upwards of $600,000, with millions of ineligible enrollees and $0 premium plans that shift costs to taxpayers.
According to the Government Accountability Office, waste, fraud, and abuse are the norm, not the exception, in Obamacare. Fake identities, deceased individuals, and stolen Social Security numbers are routinely approved for subsidized coverage. Nearly 60,000 SSNs receiving Obamacare subsidies were deceased individuals.
Furthermore, the Joint Economic Committee found that for every dollar consumers save, two dollars are lost to waste or the wallets of insurers and their middlemen. That’s not reform; it’s a racket and a textbook example of a policy doing more harm than good. Extending these subsidies, under any conditions, would be fiscal malpractice on a staggering scale.
The law Democrats promised would make healthcare affordable did the opposite. Premiums have soared 80% and deductibles routinely exceed $5,000, all while 20% of claims are denied. Americans are paying more for less. After watching this system fail for over a decade, why on Earth would we vote to expand it and throw more good taxpayer money after bad?
We know the system is broken. The real question is whether or not we are willing to do something about it, even when the Swamp turns up the heat.
In 2017, my first year in Congress, Republicans came close to repealing Obamacare, only for the effort to stall in the Senate. We lost the vote, but worse, we conceded the argument. We tiptoed around the monopoly forces of Big Medicine — insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, Big Pharma, and the hospital giants — while Democrats pushed us closer to government-run, socialized healthcare.
Thanks to President Donald Trump’s leadership, the tide is finally beginning to turn. We saved over $1 trillion by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid and Obamacare in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The president has rightly called out the “big, fat, rich” insurance companies and taken on foreign nations over unfair drug pricing.
The president has led the charge, and this week, the House passed legislation to lower healthcare costs without a taxpayer bailout.
The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act is an important first step, lowering Obamacare premiums by 11% and saving taxpayers approximately $36 billion. It fixes a loophole in Obamacare that created a perverse incentive for insurance companies to inflate premiums. It creates competition and promotes choice in the health insurance market by empowering small businesses and their employees to find affordable coverage options. And it reins in the PBM middlemen, who siphon dollars from the drug supply, by increasing transparency, helping consumers make cost-conscious choices, and lowering the cost of drugs.
Real reform demands more. Real healthcare reform will address the anticompetitive forces of healthcare monopolies. We can further invest in and expand Health Savings Accounts, which give Americans more control over how their money is spent on their healthcare, and we can further take on waste, fraud, and abuse in federal healthcare programs, ensuring benefits go only to citizens and eligible recipients.
We must get serious about tackling the root causes of rising costs. We can end the excessive hospital markups through site-neutral payment reform and demand transparency to crack down on the billing schemes that inflate every medical bill.
Democrats have shown no interest in actually lowering healthcare costs in a paradigm-shifting, responsible way. As a result, Republicans must be prepared to use reconciliation to take on the healthcare costs crisis Democrats created.
For Republicans, this is a defining moment. We can cower to political pressure, or we can stand tall and confront this crisis. What we do next will determine whether we are truly committed to making healthcare more affordable. It is time to end the Swamp’s healthcare racket and finally make America healthy again.
Jodey Arrington represents Texas’s 19th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives and is chairman of the House Budget Committee.
