If you buy your own health insurance, your bill is about to jump. The extra help that millions of families use to afford their plans — the enhanced premium tax credits — expired at the end of 2025. Congress could have stopped that. Republicans had two chances. They blew both on purpose.
Here's what happened, and here's every Republican we track who made it happen.
Two votes, one result
First, the Senate. On December 11, 2025, the Senate took up a bill (S. 3385) to extend the very tax credits that keep insurance affordable. Republicans filibustered it. The motion to move forward failed 51–48 — it needed 60 votes — so the bill died without ever getting an up-or-down vote.
Then, the House. On December 17, 2025, House Republicans passed their own health bill, H.R. 6703, and gave it a friendly name: the "Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act." There was just one problem. It does not extend the expiring tax credits — the one thing that would actually keep premiums down for next year. The Congressional Budget Office found it would leave about 100,000 more people uninsured.
So one chamber blocked the fix, and the other passed a fake one. Same outcome: your costs go up.
What it costs you
This isn't a small change. If the tax credits go away, the amount families actually pay out of pocket for the same plan would more than double — about a 114% jump on average.
On top of that, insurance companies are raising their sticker prices about 26% for 2026. Put those together and a lot of people simply can't afford to stay covered. Enrollment is projected to fall from 22.3 million people in 2025 to around 17.5 million in 2026 — millions of Americans priced out of their own health insurance.
These are the people who get hit: small-business owners, farmers, early retirees, gig workers, and anyone who doesn't get insurance through a big employer. In other words, a huge share of the working families these members were elected to represent.
The "alternative" that wasn't
When you block the real fix, you need something to point to. That's what H.R. 6703 is for. It loosens the rules on "association health plans" — cheaper plans that don't have to cover all the benefits a normal plan does. It lets members go home and say they "voted to lower premiums." But the bill leaves the actual price hike in place, and the CBO says it covers fewer people, not more. It's a press release, not a solution.
The Senators who blocked the fix
Five Republican senators we track voted to filibuster the extension and let your premiums climb:
- Tom Cotton (Arkansas)
- Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi)
- Pete Ricketts (Nebraska)
- Jon Husted (Ohio)
- Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia)
The Representatives who voted for the fake fix
Sixty-two Republican House members we track voted to pass H.R. 6703 — the bill that slaps a "lower premiums" label on a plan that doesn't lower premiums:
- Alaska: Nick Begich
- Arkansas: Rick Crawford, French Hill, Bruce Westerman
- Mississippi: Mike Ezell, Michael Guest, Trent Kelly
- Nebraska: Mike Flood, Adrian Smith
- North Carolina: Chuck Edwards, Virginia Foxx, Mark Harris, Pat Harrigan, Richard Hudson, Brad Knott, Addison McDowell, Tim Moore, David Rouzer
- Ohio: Troy Balderson, Mike Carey, Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, David Joyce, Bob Latta, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, David Taylor, Mike Turner
- Texas: Brian Babin, John Carter, Michael Cloud, Monica De La Cruz, Jake Ellzey, Pat Fallon, Brandon Gill, Craig Goldman, Lance Gooden, Ronny Jackson, Nathaniel Moran, August Pfluger, Keith Self, Pete Sessions, Beth Van Duyne, Randy Weber, Roger Williams
- Utah: Mike Kennedy, Celeste Maloy, Blake Moore
- Virginia: Ben Cline, Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Rob Wittman
- Washington: Michael Baumgartner
- West Virginia: Carol Miller, Riley Moore
- Wisconsin: Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, Derrick Van Orden, Tony Wied
- Wyoming: Harriet Hageman
The bottom line
Every one of these members will tell you they care about the cost of living. But when a bill landed on their desk that would have kept health insurance affordable for millions of their own constituents, they killed it — and then voted for a knockoff designed to give them cover. The price hike is real. The "alternative" is not. And in 2026, the people paying double for their insurance get to remember exactly who chose that for them.
