Turns Out the Obamacare Subsidy Extension Was Only Mostly Dead

THE EFFORT TO RENEW those enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies has come back to life. Again.

The House on Thursday passed a “clean” three year-extension, meaning the extra subsidies that expired on December 31 would restart and remain in place through the end of 2028 with no adjustments to the formula. The aid would be retroactive to January 1, providing some belated relief for the more than 20 million Americans whose insurance got more expensive once the extra subsidies lapsed.

Democrats have been seeking something along these lines since last year, and it was their top demand during the government shutdown last October and November. They finally got a bill to the House floor by convincing four Republicans to join them in signing a discharge petition, which forced a vote despite the objections of GOP leadership. Those four GOP votes were enough to create a majority, one that got significantly larger on Thursday when seventeen House Republicans voted yes on the proposal itself.

The final count was 230 to 196, which qualifies as a big win in today’s polarized, mostly party-line congressional environment. In any other week, it would have dominated the news, although the outcome isn’t as surprising as it might seem. Nearly all of the House Republicans who voted for the extension on Thursday are seeking re-election in closely contested districts where, you can safely assume, they are hearing from angry constituents.

But it also wouldn’t have happened without the persistence of key advocacy organizations and Democratic politicians like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the veteran congressman from New York. Jeffries was as responsible as anybody for making health care a focus of the shutdown—a decision that drew plenty of skepticism—and then for keeping his caucus united around demands for a clean extension.

As he told me in an interview on Saturday: ...