Sam Liccardo proposes Fix It Act for Affordable Care Act

The bill, backed by six Democrats and six Republicans and co-authored by U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, has company, including another House proposal to extend a scaled-back version of the subsidies and a planned Senate vote on a three-year extension of the credits with no changes. 

Ultimately, Liccardo said, the priority is preserving the program in whatever way is politically viable and creating the least amount of harm to American’s health care bills. 

“What we’re most interested in doing is trying to communicate in different ways to the White House the imperative for us to get this bill — or something like, it doesn’t have to be this one, something like it — to move forward,” he said. 

Across the country, around 24 million Americans rely on the ACA marketplace for their health care, the vast majority of whom benefit from pandemic-era credit expansions, an analysis from KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization, found. 

In San Mateo County, around 22,100 residents are benefiting from enhanced ACA premium tax credits. If these credits expire at the end of this year, these individuals will experience a projected 112% increase in monthly premiums, paying, on average, $201 more than before, per Covered California.

Republicans in both the House and Senate have struggled to come up with a cohesive, Trump-backed plan of their own as the deadline approaches. With unclear direction from the president on the one hand but the threat of constituent health care bills rising sharply, Liccardo said a significant number of his Republican colleagues have expressed support for his plan in private but are fearful of a public endorsement. 

“I think a lot of folks feel frozen by the White House. What they’re telling me is “like the idea, I’d love to get on board, I’m not crazy about facing a primary MAGA challenger,’” he said. “I’m hearing that relatively consistently, and they want to make sure before they jump, that they’re not going to be punished for it.” 

A major benefit of the Fix It Act — and one Liccardo thinks could appeal to fiscally conservative Republicans — is that the plan offers a way to pay for the extensions. But because it finances those extensions by changing compensation calculations for insurance companies, the companies themselves may be loath to see representatives support it, he said. 

Liccardo isn’t blind to the mounting challenges that any tangible solution to this problem faces, he said.

“Most people betting on Congress to get nothing done will win the bet. So we are certainly fighting against the political inertia, and I’m not delusional about the challenge,” he said. 

Still, he maintains hope that the vast majority of Americans who don’t want to see subsidies expire may be able to sway Republicans into acting before the deadline. 

“This will have an impact throughout the country on the cost of health care, and every one of my colleagues and the president ran for office on a promise to do something about the lack of affordability in this country,” he said. “It gives me some hope that perhaps folks considering how their voters at home will feel about having done nothing, in a moment when doing something is imperative.”