Van Drew And Kean Look To Extend Obamacare Health Subsidies

WASHINGTON — Two Republican congressmen from New Jersey back legislation to extend federal tax subsidies that support the health insurance markets created under a 2010 health care law, often called Obamacare.

Unless Congress acts, the subsidies will expire at the end of the year, triggering an average increase in New Jersey of 15.9% for people who receive health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 federal law.

Asked Tuesday about the bill’s prospects, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) told reporters it could be folded into broader legislation to fund the U.S. government past Sept. 30, when the current budget cycle ends.

“Like everything else here, you take it a day at a time,” Van Drew said. “I’d like to see it happen.”

Van Drew and Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th) are co-sponsors of the bill (H.R. 5145), a measure with support from politically vulnerable House members of both the Republican and Democratic parties in swing seats for the 2026 mid-term elections. The bill would extend the tax credits for a year.

Signature Trump budget cuts

President Trump’s new federal budget law cuts health coverage for low-income Americans and disabled people. Rising health care costs are emerging as a potential political sore spot for Republicans, in particular for GOP lawmakers in swing seats who could lose reelection.

Van Drew, Kean and Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th) all voted for that law and have supported the Trump administration’s approaches to carry out the law in the months since. Trump signed the law into effect July 4 during a White House ceremony. That law does not cut the health subsidies, which are scheduled to expire at the end of the year.

ACA health insurance is set to cost a lot more in 2026Beyond the soon-to-lapse health credits, that new law, the top Republican policy priority this Congress, cuts more than $1 trillion from Medicaid, the health insurance option for people of limited means, and is expected to remove about 10 million people from health coverage over the next decade.

“All physician groups are all concerned with what’s happening with these cuts,” Rep. Herb Conaway (D-3rd), a medical doctor by training, said in an interview Wednesday with NJ Spotlight News.

About 513,000 people in New Jersey are enrolled in the state-run insurance marketplace, which exists because of the 2010 federal law, and roughly 454,000 will pay more unless Congress intervenes.

If Congress extended the credits, premiums in New Jersey under the 2010 law would rise 12.8%, according to the state Department of Banking and Insurance.

Absent congressional action, premiums are expected to spike 18% on average nationwide, according to a survey the Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF, two nonpartisan groups, conducted.

The political party that held the presidency and the House of Representatives in 22 midterm elections between 1934 and 2018 has lost an average of 28 House seats, according to John T. Woolley of the American Presidency Project, which is housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Van Drew’s election concern

“We have people that are now very vulnerable,” Van Drew said of some swing-seat Republicans. He mentioned Republicans whose districts could be redrawn by Democratic lawmakers in California as well as others in different states.

The broader Republican Party should be aware that some of their peers in districts “that could swing either way” may lose their seats, he said. “You have to take care of them as well.”

In a late-August column in the conservative publication Townhall, John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster, said members of his party should protect the health credits.

Hardline Republicans have balked at continuing the health credits, which Democrats voted to establish in 2021 and 2022, leading to record enrollment in federal insurance marketplaces.

“Our recent national survey reveals a clear mandate that every Republican lawmaker should be working to preserve these health care tax credits that help make health insurance more affordable for working Americans, or risk significant political consequences,” McLaughlin wrote.

Democrats view the health care tax credits as a point of leverage they can deploy in ongoing negotiations to fund the federal government.

Van Drew eyes earmarks too

Van Drew said he wants Affordable Care Act tax credits in a spending bill, along with money for local projects known as earmarks.

Strategic Republican delay of deepest service cuts?“I would like to see it in there, as well as earmarks,” he said.

Van Drew and other Republicans, including Kean and Smith voted to eliminate all earmarks in March from the current federal budget — a move that squelched 212 projects and cost New Jersey more than $200 million local officials and community groups expected.

Hardline Republicans have balked at continuing the health credits, which Democrats voted to establish in 2021 and 2022, leading to record enrollment in federal insurance marketplaces.

“They have to learn, what everyone else has to learn in life, that you don’t get your way 100% of the time,” Van Drew said. “I don’t. You don’t. Nobody does.”

He added: “We’ve done a lot of good, conservative, fiscally responsible things. And they have to realize that there are other members in Congress.”