After House Passes 3-Year Extension of Health Insurance Tax Credits, Cantwell Calls For Immediate Senate Vote

WASHINGTON, D.C.– Today, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill to extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Enhanced Premium Tax Credits – which had just expired on December 31, 2025 -- for three additional years. The House passed the bill on a bipartisan vote, 230-196, and it now heads to the U.S. Senate for consideration.
U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued the following statement:
“The House did the right thing by voting to renew health care tax credits and enable tens of thousands of Washingtonians to afford health insurance in 2026. I'm already hearing from Washingtonians whose health insurance costs have skyrocketed this year because this crucial tax credit expired -- one Seattleite told me her health insurance premium went from $72 a month to $600 a month. The Senate could vote today to restore affordable health care to many of our constituents. The Senate should bring it up.”
Last month, Senate Republicans refused to advance a vote on extending the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits. As a result, the credits have since lapsed, and people who purchase their own health insurance on the open market have started off 2026 with record-high premium costs. Republicans’ failure to negotiate on an extension of the credits was the subject of the October 2025 federal government shutdown. During that debate, Senate Democrats pressed for a clean, three-year extension of the credits and secured a vote for such an extension, but most Senate Republicans voted against it. Today’s vote shows there is bipartisan support for that approach.
In October, Sen. Cantwellreleased a case studyshowing the actual, shocking increase in health premiums for a sample middle-class family purchasing health insurance on the ACA marketplace across all 39 WA counties in real dollars: The average increase across all 39 WA counties is $1,049/month or $12,590/year for people who relied on the tax credits.
Also in October, Sen. Cantwell released a data analysis showing a county-by-county breakdown of where Washingtonians would be hardest hit by the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits lapsing. According to that data, there are seven counties where the average health insurance premium is doubling for people who relied on the tax credit. All seven of these hardest-hit counties are in rural regions east of the Cascades: Yakima, Grant, Adams, Franklin, Douglas, Chelan, and Ferry counties. A one-pager on the data can be viewedHERE.
The 2026 health insurance price increases aren’t just impacting people who rely on the tax credit -- in Washington state, the average spike in premium costs is 21.2% for all people who purchase health insurance on the open market, including small business owners and freelancers.