Last Call for 2026 Health Coverage & the Senate's Risky Compromise
Charles Gaba
Greetings, Lincoln Square readers!
When we left off two weeks ago, we were over the New Year’s hump into 2026. The deadline for January 1st ACA coverage had passed in every state (with one exception; see below) … but there was still time for people to sign up for coverage starting in February.
The much-ballyhooed “clean” three-year extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits finally received a vote in the House, where it passed easily with a whopping 17 Republicans giving the finger to Speaker Mike Johnson by crossing over and joining every Democrat in voting for it.
The CBO also came out with their estimates of the impact, concluding that an extra 4 million Americans would gain healthcare coverage while gross premiums would also be reduced significantly. So there you go.
Of course, every one of those House Republicans also knew damned well that the bill was likely dead in the Senate (after all, it had come up nine votes short of cloture there just a couple of months earlier). So this was mostly just a way for them to take one Democratic midterm attack ad off the table.
https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/the-waiting-room-last-call-for-2026