By ALI SWENSON

NEW YORK (AP) — When senators voted on rival health bills Thursday, they had two chances to address expiring COVID-era subsidies that will result in millions of Americans saddled with higher insurance costs in the new year.

But the Senate rejected both, and hopes of solving the problem this year are running dry. Affordable Care Act subsidies will end in three weeks, more than doubling the premiums for many with health coverage through the 2010 law known as “Obamacare.”

Meanwhile, the political stakes of rising premiums are looming as affordability concerns have emerged as a key issue for American voters going into the midterms next year.

Here’s a look at the subsidies in limbo, the proposals to address the problem and how American voters are feeling about the issue.

The Affordable Care Act subsidies brought down costs

More than 24 million people have health insurance through the ACA. That includes farmers, ranchers, small-business owners and other self-employed people without other health insurance options through their work.

Enrollees who make less than 400% of the federal poverty level qualify for permanent subsidies in the program that help them offset premium costs.

In 2021, Democrats in Congress added additional subsidies, known as enhanced premium tax credits, that apply to enrollees regardless of their income. Those COVID-era subsidies are the ones set to expire Jan. 1.

With the expanded subsidies, some lower-income enrollees received health care with no premiums, and high earners paid no more than 8.5% of their income. Eligibility for middle-class earners was also expanded.

Health costs will rise for millions without a subsidy extension

If the tax credits expire, the average subsidized enrollee will see their annual premium payments go up by 114%, from an average of $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026, according to the health care research nonprofit KFF.

Especially hard-hit groups will include a small number of higher earners who will have to pay a lot more without the extra subsidies and a large number of lower earners who will have to pay a small amount more, said Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at KFF.

Some enrollees, especially those who are young and healthy, may drop out of coverage entirely rather than pay the steeper fees, experts say. A recent KFF poll found that 1 in 4 enrollees said they would “very likely” go without health insurance if their premiums doubled next year.

Others might opt for ACA plans with cheaper premiums that have worse coverage and higher deductibles.

In most states, for Americans who want coverage to start Jan. 1, the window to shop for ACA coverage began Nov. 1 and ends Monday.

FILE – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., left, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., meet with reporters to speak about health care affordability at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

Democrats backed an extension, while Republicans pushed for savings accounts

The plan championed by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York would have allowed the vast majority of program enrollees to keep benefiting from the enhanced subsidies for three more years. It would have saved millions of people money in the short term and allowed some who might otherwise consider skipping coverage to stay insured.

But that would have come at a cost of nearly $83 billion added to federal deficits over the next decade according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans on Thursday backed a proposal from Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, to scrap the subsidies in favor of health savings accounts that would be funded for the next two years.

To be eligible, people would have had to choose a lower-cost, higher deductible bronze or catastrophic health insurance plan and make less than 700% of the federal poverty level. Those aged 18 to 49 would have gotten $1,000 a year, while those 50 and up would get $1,500.

The money could have been spent on health costs but not premiums. Health analysts warned that could have posed a problem when low-income Americans were already struggling to afford monthly fees.

On Thursday, neither bill came close to the 60 votes needed to pass.

FILE – Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, left, and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., emerge from a GOP meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

The political stakes are only growing

The impasse in the Senate came as lawmakers grow anxious about the 2026 midterms. Pocketbook concerns, including health costs, are expected to be top issues for voters.

Democrats, who forced a 43-day shutdown over the expiring subsidies earlier this fall, are sure to shine a spotlight on the subject. Republicans may note that the Democrats in charge made the enhanced subsidies temporary in the first place.

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At the same time, the GOP has yet to unite on a path forward. In the House, moderate Republicans who are up for reelection have been pushing Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to extend the subsidies with new reforms while the right flank of the party has demanded deeper changes to a heath program they have long disliked.

Last month, the White House circulated a plan to extend the subsidies for two years while adjusting eligibility requirements. It ran into Republican pushback and has not had much traction since.

Trump, in a speech Wednesday, seemed to advocate an entirely different plan, giving people money to buy their own health insurance plans. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., has introduced such a bill.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said some options could be brought to the floor as soon as next week.

Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is proposing to overhaul a regulatory panel that monitors the nation’s financial stability, by advocating for looser regulations.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council, a U.S. body created in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, monitors risks to the financial system and coordinates regulators’ approaches to overseeing the U.S. financial system. In a letter released by Bessent Thursday, he said “too often in the past, efforts to safeguard the financial system have resulted in burdensome and often duplicative regulations.”

“Our administration is changing that approach,” said Bessent, who chairs the committee, which is meeting on Thursday.

Bessent said the council will begin to “consider where aspects of the U.S. financial regulatory framework impose undue burdens and where they harm economic growth, thereby undermining financial stability.”

Voting members of the FSOC committee include the head of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the Comptroller of the Currency; the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and several other agency heads.

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It was established in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a sweeping U.S. financial reform law created to prevent future economic meltdowns.

A critic of the Trump administration, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., panned the idea of loosening financial regulations, saying “taking this hands-off approach to financial stability would leave our financial system and economy at greater risk in any economic environment.”

“Going down this path just as cracks are emerging in the financial system and yellow lights are flashing across our economy is especially reckless,” she said in a statement, citing the recent bankruptcies of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings, auto parts company First Brands, and home remodeling platform Renovo Home Partners.

By MEG KINNARD

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday linked the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela to the Trump administration’s counterdrug efforts in Latin America as tensions escalate with the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

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Noem’s assertion, which came during her testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee, provided the Republican administration’s most thorough assessment so far of why it took control of the vessel on Wednesday. Incredibly unusual, the use of U.S. forces to seize a merchant ship was the latest step in the administration’s pressure campaign on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States.

Asked to delineate the U.S. Coast Guard’s role in the effort, Noem called the tanker seizure “a successful operation directed by the president to ensure that we’re pushing back on a regime that is systematically covering and flooding our country with deadly drugs and killing our next generation of Americans.”

Noem went on lay out the ”lethal doses of cocaine” she said had been kept from entering the U.S. as a result.

On Wednesday at the White House, Trump told reporters that the tanker “was seized for a very good reason.” Asked what would happen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”

The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, a campaign that is facing growing scrutiny from Congress.

Trump, who has said land attacks are coming soon but has not offered more details, has broadly justified the moves as necessary to stem the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S.

Venezuela’s government said in a statement that the tanker seizure “constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.” Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

By JOSH FUNK, AP Transportation Writer

Senators from both parties pushed Thursday for changes to a massive defense bill after crash investigators and victims’ families warned the legislation would undo key safety reforms stemming from a collision between an airliner and Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.

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The head of the National Transportation Safety Board investigating the crash, a group of the victims’ family members and senators on the Commerce Committee all said the bill the House advanced Wednesday would make America’s skies less safe. It would allow the military to operate essentially the same way as it did before the January crash, which was the deadliest in more than two decades, they said.

Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz filed two amendments Thursday to strip out the worrisome helicopter safety provisions and replace them with a bill they introduced last summer to strengthen requirements, but it’s not clear if Republican leadership will allow the National Defense Authorization Act to be changed at this stage because that would delay its passage.

“We owe it to the families to put into law actual safety improvements, not give the Department of Defense bigger loopholes to exploit,” the senators said.

Right now, the bill includes exceptions that would allow military helicopters to fly through the crowded airspace around the nation’s capital without using a key system called ADS-B to broadcast their locations just like they did before the January collision. The Federal Aviation Administration began requiring that in March. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called the bill a “significant safety setback” that is inviting a repeat of that disaster.

“It represents an unacceptable risk to the flying public, to commercial and military aircraft, crews and to the residents in the region,” Homendy said. “It’s also an unthinkable dismissal of our investigation and of 67 families … who lost loved ones in a tragedy that was entirely preventable. This is shameful.”

The military used national security waivers before the crash to skirt FAA safety requirements on the grounds that they worried about the security risks of disclosing their helicopters’ locations. Tim and Sheri Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines jet, said this bill only adds “a window dressing fix that would continue to allow for the setting aside of requirements with nothing more than a cursory risk assessment.”

Homendy said it would be ridiculous to entrust the military with assessing the safety risks when they aren’t the experts, and neither the Army nor the FAA noticed 85 close calls around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the crash. She said the military doesn’t know how to do that kind of risk assessment, adding that no one writing the bill bothered to consult the experts at the NTSB who do know.

The White House and military didn’t immediately respond Thursday to questions about these safety concerns. But earlier this week Trump made it clear that he wants to sign the National Defense Authorization Act because it advances a number of his priorities and provides a 3.8% pay raise for many military members.

The Senate is expected to take up the bill next week, and it appears unlikely that any final changes will be made. But Congress is leaving for a holiday break at the end of the week, and the defense bill is considered something that must pass by the end of the year.

But Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune, a Republican, didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether he will allow any amendments to the bill to be considered.