Congress Promises Health Care Deal Today, As Long As Nobody Remembers 2024
KEY POINTS
- •Congressional negotiators plan to release a bipartisan health care package reviving parts of a 2024 deal.
- •The package includes changes to pharmacy benefit manager practices and hospital outpatient billing controls.
- •Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies are excluded amid GOP resistance, while separate talks limp on.
In a plot twist worthy of a daytime soap, bipartisan congressional negotiators are set to unveil a health care deal that stubbornly refuses to die, despite being torpedoed back in the apocalyptic year of 2024 by Elon Musk and then President-elect Trump. This miracle bundle includes business practice overhauls for pharmacy benefit managers aka 'middlemen'—because who doesn't love more middlemen with new rules? It dodges extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, pleasing GOP leaders if not Democrats, while the poor subsidies expired quietly in 2025 with bipartisan fans trying to resuscitate them sans enough Republican CPR. Telehealth Medicare flexibilities and unique hospital outpatient IDs to prevent mysterious billing cameos make their debut too. If negotiations don't implode dramatically again, expect a congressional sequel by month-end packed with complicated jargon and delayed relief.
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Congress is about to produce a bipartisan health care miracle: ignoring reality, dodging subsidies, and hoping nobody recalls Elon and Trump wrecked the first show.
Health care deal revives like a zombie apocalypse, only with less brains and more billing codes.
Musk and Trump sank the first deal, but Congress dusted it off like a VHS nobody asked for.
Source: Axios | Published: 1/19/2026 | Author: Peter Sullivan
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