{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.crapo.senate.gov/media/newsreleases/crapo-a-missed-opportunity-for-real-health-care-reform", "Crapo: A Missed Opportunity for Real Health Care Reform", "2025-12-11", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "ID", "Mike Crapo", "C000880", "www.crapo.senate.gov", "crapo", "https://www.crapo.senate.gov/media/newsreleases", "scraper", "Washington, D.C.\u2014Today, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) voted to give American families more control over their own health care, while Democrats charted a course that will increase costs for millions of Americans and make no real reforms to a broken health care system.\n\nCrapo\u2019s legislation, the Health Care Freedom for Patients Act, introduced alongside U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-Louisiana), would create pre-funded, patient-driven health savings accounts (HSAs). The Crapo-Cassidy plan would help cover out-of-pocket costs, reduce benchmark premiums by 11 percent and give families more control over their health care. This bill is an alternative to Democrats\u2019 temporary COVID bonuses, which send billions of tax dollars to insurance companies without lowering premiums. Democrats blocked the Crapo-Cassidy measure, which required 60 votes to advance, by a vote of 51-48.\n\n\u201cToday was a missed opportunity to lay the groundwork for real health care reforms,\u201d Crapo said. \u201cRepublicans put forward a fiscally responsible proposal to reduce premiums, save taxpayers\u2019 money and give Americans control over their health care. Meanwhile, Democrats insisted on extending the same policies that have led to rampant fraud and higher premiums. We cannot continue to throw good money after bad policy and paper over the cracks in our health care system. It is time to give Americans more control over their health care choices and make quality health care more affordable.\u201d\n\nBefore the vote, Crapo spoke on the U.S. Senate Floor in support of the Republican bill.\n\nOn the Democrats\u2019 proposal:\n\n\u201cThey call their plan a \u2018clean\u2019 extension. A three-year extension of this program with no reforms, costing hardworking families $83 billion, with tens of billions going to big insurance companies and fraudsters is anything but \u2018clean.\u2019\n\n\u201cThe Government Accountability Office recently uncovered how embarrassingly easy it is to game the Obamacare subsidy system, with the Wall Street Journal calling it a \u2018Mecca for Fraud.\u2019 This year, there were over six million improper enrollments, costing $27 billion.\n\n\u201cEven the Washington Post recognized that \u2018Obamacare subsidies make it too easy to scam the system.\u2019\u201d\n\nOn the Republican health care plan:\n\n\u201cInstead of the Minority Leader\u2019s $83 billion dollar extension, which would do nothing to reduce fraud and would keep driving premiums higher, Senator Cassidy and I have offered a fiscally responsible proposal that will reduce premiums, save taxpayers\u2019 money and give Americans control over their health care.\n\n\u201cOur bill provides pre-funded, patient-driven health savings accounts for Americans enrolled in qualified Obamacare bronze and catastrophic plans. Importantly, low-income Americans will still receive subsidies for those plans through the permanent portion of the premium tax credits.\n\n\u201cAmericans who choose this option will have both insurance coverage and help paying for their remaining out-of-pocket costs, all without giving insurers a reason to enroll them in plans without their knowledge, as has occurred for years.\n\n\u201cOur bill also fixes an error in the original design of Obamacare by funding the cost-sharing reductions it mandated, reducing benchmark premiums by 11 percent.\u201d\n\n______________________\n\nFull remarks as prepared for delivery:\n\nMr. President, we have spent a lot of time this week talking about the problems of our health care system. Premiums are rising, hospitals are struggling and out-of-pocket costs are out of control.\n\nThese problems are not new. They were used to justify creating Obamacare, and Obamacare has progressively made them worse. Americans did not keep their doctors, they did not keep their insurance plans and their premiums did not go down. In fact, Obamacare premiums have risen at roughly double the rate of employer-provided plans.\n\nOur Democrat colleagues have had only one response to these skyrocketing premiums: more spending. Without ever winning a single Republican vote, they created the Obamacare premium tax credits, expanded them to Americans of all income levels and extended that expansion.\n\nThose credits did not reduce costs. All they did was shift the cost to taxpayers and help insurers to hike premiums higher and higher.\n\nDemocrats know that Obamacare has failed. They themselves have said so repeatedly.\n\nBut with a deadline quickly approaching\u2014again, a deadline set by my Democrat colleagues\u2014they say we have no choice but to extend this policy again. This is a policy even they could not make permanent when they controlled all three branches of government. Even so, their only offer is more spending.\n\nThey call their plan a \u2018clean\u2019 extension. A three-year extension of this program with no reforms, costing hardworking families $83 billion, with tens of billions going to big insurance companies and fraudsters is anything but \u2018clean.\u2019\n\nThe Government Accountability Office recently uncovered how embarrassingly easy it is to game the Obamacare subsidy system, with the Wall Street Journal calling it a \u201cMecca for Fraud.\u201d This year, there were over six million improper enrollments, costing $27 billion.\n\nEven the Washington Post recognized that \u201cObamacare subsidies make it too easy to scam the system.\u201d\n\nFortunately, we have another option. Instead of the Minority Leader\u2019s $83 billion dollar extension, which would do nothing to reduce fraud and would keep driving premiums higher, Senator Cassidy and I have offered a fiscally responsible proposal that will reduce premiums, save taxpayers\u2019 money and give Americans control over their health care.\n\nOur bill provides pre-funded, patient-driven health savings accounts (HSAs) for Americans enrolled in qualified Obamacare bronze and catastrophic plans. Importantly, low-income Americans will still receive subsidies for those plans through the permanent portion of the premium tax credits.\n\nAmericans who choose this option will have both insurance coverage and help paying for their remaining out-of-pocket costs, all without giving insurers a reason to enroll them in plans without their knowledge, as has occurred for years.\n\nOur bill also fixes an error in the original design of Obamacare by funding the cost-sharing reductions it mandated, reducing benchmark premiums by 11 percent.\n\nThe Minority Leader\u2019s plan is not going to pass. But, if just a few of my Democrat colleagues join us in voting for our bill, we can put this crisis behind us and lay the groundwork for real reforms. For instance, Senator Wyden and I remain intent on getting our bipartisan pharmacy benefit manager reform to the president\u2019s desk.\n\nThe choice before us is clear:\n\nWe can continue with business as usual and extend the same policy that has brought our health care system to the point where every member of this body admits that it is broken, or -\n\nWe can try something different. We can change the incentives Obamacare gives insurers to drive premiums higher and put our confidence in Americans to make the best decisions about their own health care. If we fall off the Democrat-created subsidy cliff, it will not be because we had no other choice.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.crapo.senate.gov/media/newsreleases/crapo-a-missed-opportunity-for-real-health-care-reform"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.588412094861269, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}