Three of Colorado’s eight members of the U.S. House — Republicans Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, and Gabe Evans — voted against a bipartisan bill this afternoon to reinstate Obamacare funds that expired at the beginning of the year.
Despite their opposition, the bipartisan measure passed the House 230-196, providing a glimmer of hope to the roughly 80,000 Coloradans estimated to lose their health insurance in the wake of the Jan. 1 expiration of the funding.
Colorado Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd voted for reinstating the subsidies along with Colorado’s Democratic Reps. Jason Crow, Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, and Brittany Pettersen.
But any hope for the 22 million people whose insurance premiums are set to spike without the subsidies will likely be extinguished in the U.S. Senate, where the measure’s prospects of passage are slim, in part because the same bill to extend the Obamacare subsidies for three years died in the Senate in December.
“I cannot support an extension of the ACA subsidies without serious reform,” said Crank on X. “Congress cannot keep writing a blank check to Obamacare and slapping a subsidy band-aid on a healthcare system that remains fundamentally unaffordable. Congress needs to focus on real reforms that lower costs, improve and expand competition so consumers have real choices.”
Evans claimed that Obamacare subsidies were tainted with “systemic problems and rampant fraud,” while Boebert has said the subsidies were going to “illegal aliens health care” and to “able-bodied adults.”
“I am committed to making healthcare affordable and accessible for all Americans, which is why I have consistently supported bills like the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act,” said Evans in a statement on X. “However, I cannot in good conscience vote for legislation that does nothing to fix the systemic problems and rampant fraud within the enhanced Obamacare tax credits that’s resulted in handouts to Big Insurance, allowed Colorado to subsidize health care for thousands of illegal immigrants, and wasted billions in taxpayer dollars. I am open to supporting a common-sense bill that puts necessary guardrails in place and gradually phases out these subsidies, but this is not it.”
Last year, Evans went further, falsely saying that all of the subsidies go to undocumented immigrants.
“These subsidies that Democrats are talking about are going to illegal immigrants,” said Evans on Fox 31. “If we want to get the cost of healthcare down in Colorado, we have to stop paying for illegal immigrants. We have to stop being a sanctuary city and state, and we have to cut the red tape and regulations in Colorado that is strangling our economy to include healthcare.”
In fact, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the subsidies.
For his part Hurd, who was one of 17 House Republicans who voted in favor of the subsidies, told Colorado Public Radio that he wanted to send something to the Senate.
“In the end I thought we can’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. And we need to get something over to the Senate,” Hurd told CPR’s Caitlyn Kim, adding that senators “conveyed to us that it would be important — an important message — from the House to send it if it had bipartisan support.”
A group of senators is drafting another bill that would extend the Obamacare funding for two years with income restrictions and premium minimums. It may be ready for a vote next week.
The House vote took place after a handful of congressional Republicans, none from Colorado, joined Democrats in using an unusual procedure, called a discharge petition, to force a vote on the measure.
None of Colorado’s four House Republicans signed the petition, including Hurd, who previously supported a set of principles to move some Obamacare funding forward, as well as legislation that resembles the Senate draft.
The House passed the discharge petition yesterday in a 221-205 procedural vote, setting up today’s vote on the bill.
Evans’ ‘no’ vote yesterday was blasted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which sees GOP opposition to Obamacare funding as a serious liability in November’s midterm elections.
“Coloradans need leaders who will fight to lower costs, not actively work to jack up prices on everything from groceries, utilities, and today – health care,” said DCCC spokesperson Nebeyatt Betre in a news release yesterday. “This open betrayal by Gabe Evans to try to stop the House from addressing the GOP health care crisis will cost him his job come November.”
Last year, Democrats at first refused to vote to fund the federal government unless money for the Obamacare subsidies was included. But a group of Senate Democrats eventually caved on their core demand, accepting the promise of a Senate vote on the funding.
Congressional District 8 candidate Manny Rutinel (D-Commerce City), who’s campaigning against fellow Democrats to run against Evans (or another Republican) in November, said in a news release today: “My family knows what it means to skip dinner so the medical bills get paid. With Evans’ vote, tens of thousands of his constituents will see their healthcare costs nearly triple. Coloradans will have to choose between paying sky-high insurance costs and other essentials like groceries and rent. Evans’ vote fails Colorado families and is unacceptable,” Rutinel said. “Evans just sided with special interests in rejecting a bill that would save his hardworking constituents money.”
Westminster state Rep. Shannon Bird, another potential Democratic challenger of Evans, said in a release: “I’ve been uninsured, and I know what it’s like to worry about not being able to afford to go to the doctor. Every day, I hear from Coloradans across our district facing struggles similar to the one I faced, and it is all because of this crisis that Gabe Evans and Donald Trump have manufactured. Our friends and neighbors are worried for their families as health insurance premiums skyrocket by as much as 200 percent. Today, Gabe Evans failed yet again to do his job and put the health and livelihoods of the people he is supposed to be serving at risk by voting against a common-sense bipartisan compromise to lower health insurance costs.”
Before today’s vote, the Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating that the $81 billion subsidies would increase the number of people with health insurance by over 8 million by 2029.
U.S. Capitol.
