Mike Johnson has dedicated his speakership to defeating the Affordable Care Act. In 2025, he passed legislation that massively cut taxes for the wealthy, paying for them in part by eliminating health care in the United States.
Johnson’s legislation threw 4 million Americans off Medicaid and ended the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies, raising health insurance premiums for more than 20 million Americans.
Speaker Johnson was so desperate to stop any possibility of the ACA subsidies being extended that he shut down the government to prevent an agreement on extending the subsidies, even going so far as to shut down the House of Representatives for almost two months to ensure that an agreement that would extend the subsidies and end the shutdown could not be negotiated.
Given Johnson’s deep hostility to an extension of Obamacare subsidies and the amount of power Johnson has as Speaker, what happened in the House of Representatives on Thursday was astonishing.
The Democratic bill, which they first proposed in early 2025, is an extension of the subsidies for three years. After vulnerable Republicans in the House of Representatives broke ranks with Johnson after he went back on his promise to allow a vote on extending the subsidies, and supported a discharge petition to force a vote on the Democratic bill, the legislation passed the House of Representatives 230 to 196.
17 House Republicans defied their speaker and voted in favor of the legislation. Those 17 Republicans were Bresnahan, Carey, De La Cruz, Fitzpatrick, Garbarino, Hurd (Co.), Joyce (Ohio), Kean, LaLota, Lawler, Mackenzie, Miller (Ohio), Nunn (Iowa), Salazar, Valadao, Van Orden and Wittman.
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