{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.murray.senate.gov/days-before-open-enrollment-begins-senator-murray-joins-idaho-leaders-residents-who-rely-on-aca-tax-credits-to-call-on-republicans-to-come-to-the-table-to-prevent-health-care-costs-from-skyrocketing/", "Days Before Open Enrollment Begins, Senator Murray Joins Idaho Leaders, Residents Who Rely on ACA Tax Credits to Call on Republicans to Come to the Table to Prevent Health Care Costs from Skyrocketing", "2025-10-09", "2025", "2025-10", "Democrat", "Senate", "WA", "Patty Murray", "M001111", "www.murray.senate.gov", "murray", "https://www.murray.senate.gov/category/press-releases/", "scraper", "KFF: Most Republicans and MAGA Supporters Say Congress Should Extend the Enhanced ACA Tax Credits Set to Expire Next Year\n\nICYMI: Wall Street Journal \u2013 White House Senses Political Risk on Healthcare Despite Shutdown Bravado; Murray takes case directly to Idahoans as new signs indicate Republicans are feeling the heat over their refusal to take action to prevent people\u2019s costs from spiking\n\nTypical 60-year old couple in Idaho making $85,000 will face a $17,900 spike in annual premiums\n\nOpen enrollment in Idaho begins October 15th; More than 100,000 Idahoans rely on ACA tax credits\n\n***WATCH press conference HERE***\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2013 Today, on the ninth day of the Republican shutdown, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, held a virtual press conference with Idaho State Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow and Idahoans who rely on Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits to afford health care: Bob McMichael, an author and retired teacher from Council, ID, and Susan Wood, a retiree from Boise.\n\nRight now, Democrats are fighting to save the ACA tax credits, which expire at the end of the year. Without them, 22 million Americans\u2014mostly in red states\u2014will see their health care costs skyrocket. Premiums will more than double, on average, for Americans who buy health care through the ACA exchanges, and these higher costs will push 4.2 million people off their health coverage over the next decade. In Idaho, over 100,000 people rely on the ACA tax credits\u2014and without them, the average increase in annual premiums is expected to be at least $975. If the ACA tax credits aren\u2019t extended, a typical 60-year-old couple making $85,000 in Idaho will face a whopping $17,900 increase in their annual premium costs next year and 25,000 Idahoans are likely to forgo health insurance altogether.\n\nMore than 3 in 4 people who get their health care through the ACA marketplaces\u201418.7 million out of 24.3 million\u2014live in states President Trump won in 2024. The vast majority of Americans want Congress to renew the ACA tax credits, according to recent polling from KFF\u2014including six in ten Republicans and a majority of Republicans who identify as MAGA. At the press conference, Senator Murray made her case directly to Idahoans, explaining how inaction by their Republican members of Congress will force their health care premiums to explode next year. She implored Republican leaders to come to the table as new signs indicate that Republicans are feeling the heat on their deeply unpopular position. In recent days, reporting has indicated that the White House is privately fretting about the issue, and President Trump signaled openness to cutting a deal.\n\n\u201cAcross the country, premiums are going to more than double for millions of families, unless Congress saves the tax credits that help people afford insurance on the ACA exchanges. In Idaho, that means pretty much everyone who buys health insurance through the Your Health Idaho online marketplace is about to see a huge spike in their health care costs. But Republicans don\u2019t want to talk about it. And they have refused to do anything about it. In fact, Republicans have chosen to shut down the government rather than work with Democrats on a solution to stop this from happening. So here\u2019s my feeling on this: if Republicans don\u2019t want to level with their own constituents about what is at stake, I am happy to do it,\u201d said Senator Murray. \u201cIf the tax credits expire, an estimated 25,000 people in Idaho will be forced off their health coverage because they won\u2019t be able to afford it anymore. We are talking about families with kids. We are talking about seniors, retirees who aren\u2019t old enough for Medicare but desperately need health coverage. We are talking about countless farmers, small business owners, and freelancers. If Republicans continue refusing to act, then next week, families across Idaho are going to come face to face with premiums they simply cannot afford.\u201d\n\nSenator Murray played a critical role in passing the enhanced premium tax credits in the American Rescue Plan in 2021 and extending them in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, and she has been fighting for months to make sure these important health care tax credits don\u2019t expire, including cosponsoring multiple pieces of legislation\u2014the Health Care Affordability Act and theProtecting Health Care and Lowering Costs Act\u2014that would make them permanent.\n\n\u201cI am overwhelmed with calls every day, from Idahoans who are worried about their health care and frustrated by what they see coming out of Washington. Farmers in the Magic Valley, teachers in Sandpoint, small business owners in Boise. Their stories are remarkably similar. They are worried. They are frustrated. And more than anything, they are asking, \u201cWhy are the people we send to Washington making our lives harder? In less than a week, Idaho\u2019s health insurance exchange opens for enrollment. But instead of certainty, families are facing the threat of skyrocketing premiums. That is because Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have shut down the government rather than working with Democrats to extend the Affordable Care Act\u2019s premium tax credits,\u201d said Idaho State Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow. \u201cWe are all hearing stories from Idahoans across the state. Parents who have delayed surgeries. Retirees who are counting pills to stretch their prescriptions. Young couples trying to decide whether they can even afford to start a family. And what is often overlooked is that more than one in four Idaho farmers and ranchers buy their health care through the ACA marketplace. They do not have employer plans. They depend on these credits to protect their families and keep their operations running. Times are already tough for farmers due to Trump tariffs, and they don\u2019t need any more challenges as they try to put food on their tables and ours\u2026 Making these tax credits permanent would cost less than one-tenth of the price tag of the billionaire tax cut they passed earlier this year. Less than a tenth. If Congress can afford to hand out massive tax breaks to billionaires and corporations, it can certainly afford to help working families keep their health insurance.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo my wife and I are both retired\u2026 We are kind of not at all unique in that we are finally though one of those couples who are senior citizens on a fixed income. I never, ever thought I would say that, but that\u2019s a fact for us now. Our annual income is about $42,000, that\u2019s some pensions, and my wife elected to take Social Security early. With the Social Security that she elected to take, and at age 62 that put us over the threshold to receive Medicaid for our health care. And so we, last year, chose a health plan on the exchange under the Affordable Care Act and qualified for the tax credits. And our tax credit was about $1,865 and our health plan this year, the premium was $1,916, so that left us to have to pay $51 a month for our coverage,\u201d said Bob McMichael, an author and retired teacher from Council, Idaho. \u201cBut last week, I received a letter from the healthcare plan informing us that in January 2026 our health plan premium would increase by $367 to $2,232. So, if the tax credit stayed the same our monthly premium would have gone from $51 to $367 and that is almost unaffordable for us. It\u2019s going to really hurt. That\u2019s assuming the tax credits don\u2019t get taken away. If the tax credits do get taken away, the annual cost of the plan that we are on will be almost $27,000. So even if they keep the tax credits and they somehow get put back in, our increase in our premium is going to be almost 800% per month. 800% that\u2019s eight times. And so, a lot of the reporting that I\u2019ve seen saying that might double just seems confusing to me. So, I\u2019m not an expert by any means, but it seems crazy that our congress people who are supposed to represent their constituents in Idaho, are completely tone deaf and ignoring this. Basically, our option is even if they reinstate the tax credits, or if they if they are still on the table for us in 2026, it\u2019s going to be hard. But if they don\u2019t reinstate them, then we simply won\u2019t be able to afford any health care at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy premium is set to go up by 173% next year. While that\u2019s a significant difference for someone at my retirement income level, for someone under age 65 who makes $65,000 or more, whether retired or self-employed, my same plan would be over $700 month, or an almost a 900% increase,\u201d said Susan Wood, a Boise resident since 1992 who retired in July. \u201cNo one can afford a 900% increase on any one item, let alone the exponentially rising costs of groceries, rent, homeowner\u2019s insurance, auto insurance, and it just goes on. And, here is the snowball effect: the healthy risk pool will elect to drop coverage, the insurance companies are left with a pool of individuals who have ongoing medical conditions, claims go up, premiums go up, insurance companies drop out of the market, and those who are healthy and dropped coverage risk a health crisis with no coverage. This is an impossible situation that needs to be fixed for the long term.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:32:54Z"]], "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.murray.senate.gov/days-before-open-enrollment-begins-senator-murray-joins-idaho-leaders-residents-who-rely-on-aca-tax-credits-to-call-on-republicans-to-come-to-the-table-to-prevent-health-care-costs-from-skyrocketing/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.029858995229006, "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"}