The premium help that expired
No vote was needed to take this away — Congress just let the deadline pass.
The enhanced ACA premium tax credits — bigger subsidies that helped more than double Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollment since 2021 — expired at the end of 2025 when Congress didn't renew them. No bill, no vote against them. Just a deadline nobody moved.
KFF puts the average marketplace enrollee's premium payment at $1,904 a year now, up from $888 — a $1,016 jump, on top of everything else in this ledger. CBO's own estimate: permanently extending the credit would have cost $350 billion over ten years and kept 3.8 million more people insured through 2035.
It's the same trade as the rest of this law's health cuts — savings booked by leaving people exposed — just made by letting a deadline pass instead of putting a signature on it.
Health insurance premiums are jumping $1,016 a year for the average marketplace enrollee — not because Congress voted for it, but because they didn't vote at all.
