![\"\u2018We](\"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/576803518_122219260136123475_3708860706741000627_n-1762503304-q80.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Newsmax on Monday that once the government shutdown ends, House Republicans are readying ideas to tackle rising healthcare costs.<\/p>\n
The House on Sept. 19 passed a clean continuing resolution 217-212 that would fund the federal government through Nov. 21, but the measure quickly stalled in the Senate amid a broader fight over Affordable Care Act subsidies.<\/p>\n
The pandemic-era subsidies, which were created by Democrats, are scheduled to expire at the end of the year,\u00a0the outlet reported.<\/p>\n
During an appearance on \u201cThe Record with Greta Van Susteren,\u201d Speaker Mike Johnson declined to specify when the House might consider a bipartisan Senate proposal to fund the federal government through January 30.<\/p>\n
The Senate advanced the measure Sunday night by clearing a key procedural hurdle, though a final vote is still expected to take place in the coming days.<\/p>\n
Johnson noted that House Republicans had included provisions to address rising healthcare costs in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but said Democrats ultimately removed them during negotiations<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that we are subsidizing very wealthy insurance companies,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThat is not helping costs go down. It\u2019s driving premiums up even higher. So, Republicans want to fix the broken system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to throw good money at a broken and failing system. And the Affordable Care Act has been that since it was signed into law, passed by the Democrats alone back in 2010,\u201d the Louisiana Republican added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to reduce the cost of healthcare and the cost of living, and Republicans are the ones that have the ideas to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Johnson stated that the OBBB included a provision which, according to him, would have decreased healthcare premiums by 12.7%.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the Democrats fought to take it out of the bill,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, if they cared so much about healthcare costs, they shouldn\u2019t be fighting provisions like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re putting together some ideas that will drive the premiums down because healthcare is too expensive in this country. It\u2019s too expensive because the Democrats built a system that doesn\u2019t work. So, we need to look at the root causes of the costs that have skyrocketed and address that for the people,\u201d Johnson told Van Sustren.<\/p>\n
\u201cMerely subsidizing something is not the is not the answer. When the government subsidizes something, it almost always means it\u2019s not working. And that\u2019s the problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
With the subsidies set to expire on Dec. 31, Johnson said, \u201cit\u2019s an urgent matter for us, and it has been, which is why we put it into the bill that we passed in the early summer. And the Democrats fought to take it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we\u2019re reintroducing some of these ideas,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of ideas on how to drive the cost down, and we have November and December to work on that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to get a bipartisan consensus on some of this. And so, we\u2019ll be presenting our ideas and putting them on the table,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Democrats, this is very important to point out, they don\u2019t have any reform ideas at all. Their argument is they want a completely unreformed continuation. They would do it permanently, most of them on government just subsidizing the insurance companies. And that is not the solution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to be educating the population, and along the way, as we do this, come up with reforms that will actually solve the problem and not make it worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson, in a separate interview with Fox News, urged GOP members of the House to return to Washington before an expected vote on a measure to reopen the government on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to plan on voting, on being here, at least by Wednesday,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt is possible that things could shift a little bit later in the week, but right now we think we\u2019re on track for a vote on Wednesday. So we need you here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six women who say they were trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein or his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell made a public appeal on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., demanding the federal government release more investigative files. They also urged former President Donald Trump to publicly rule out a pardon for Maxwell. The women appeared alongside family members of Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser who died by suicide in April, and criticized what they called a long-standing failure to deliver justice.<\/p>\n
Jess Michaels, who alleges Epstein raped her in 1991, described him as a \u201cmaster manipulator\u201d and said his behavior followed a calculated strategy that left young women and teenage girls defenseless. Michaels cited a \u201csevere miscarriage of justice\u201d and delays in accountability as her motivation for speaking out. Her remarks echoed the sentiments of other survivors who say they were also groomed and abused.<\/p>\n
Wendy Avis and Jena-Lisa Jones, both of whom say they were 14 when Epstein abused them, condemned the silence of adults who may have witnessed the abuse. Jones stated that many people around Epstein \u201cvery clearly knew what was going on\u201d but have refused to speak up. Avis, speaking publicly for the first time, stressed that victims like her still haven\u2019t received justice, calling for broader recognition of the everyday people affected.<\/p>\n
All six women, including Marijke Chartouni, Lisa Phillips, and Liz Stein, expressed deep frustration with the Justice Department. Stein accused officials of failing to protect or inform survivors and backed bipartisan efforts in Congress to force transparency. Their statements came just before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released over 33,000 pages of Epstein-related documents.<\/p>\n
Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are leading a legislative push to investigate alleged mishandling of the federal probes into Epstein and Maxwell. Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, continues to deny wrongdoing. Phillips warned that if the system continues to fail them, survivors are prepared to take justice into their own hands: \u201cWe\u2019ll compile our own list.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Newsmax on Monday that once the government shutdown ends, House Republicans are readying ideas to tackle rising healthcare costs. The House on Sept. 19 passed a clean…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hot-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}