House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) delivered on a promise Wednesday by shepherding a GOP health care reform bill through to passage in a 216-211 vote before the Christmas recess. Republicans touted the measure by stating that it will lower health care costs for all Americans by an estimated 11%.

The legislation, titled the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act, takes a number of steps to lower health insurance premiums by requiring more transparency from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for the benefit of workers and health insurers and providing more funding for cost sharing reduction payments. The bill also adds more options for health insurance through expanding access to association health plans, allow small businesses more options to provide more affordable care to employees, and strengthening rules to allow employers to offer contributions to their employees to purchase their own coverage.

News outlets, Democrats, and a handful of Republicans criticized the bill for not extending COVID-era Obamacare health care subsidies to a small segment of Americans. But GOP lawmakers are pointing out that the subsidies do nothing to ease health insurance premiums for all Americans and are rife with fraudulent claims.

“Obamacare has been an unmitigated disaster for 15 years, crushing families with high premiums and rampant fraud while enriching insurance companies,” stated House Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger (R-Texas). “It’s time for conservatives to get serious about advancing policies that can become law and therefore actually reduce costs.” He added that the House bill is a “solid first step.”

Other congressmen like Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) agree.

“[T]his bill is focused on driving down the cost of health care for all Americans,” he contended during “Washington Watch” Thursday. “That’s roughly 347 million Americans. When people talk about extending the premium tax credits or the Obamacare subsidies, they’re only talking about 7% of the population. So the bill that we passed yesterday off the House floor will help lower the health care costs for all Americans. It creates associated health plans, which have [been] found to be very beneficial in the first Trump administration. This puts it into statute. It puts into statute the choice agreement accounts. It allows small businesses to give money tax free to their employees so that they can go purchase their own health insurance. There’s [also] PBM reform that creates more transparency to help lower all drug prices. These are steps that help lower the cost of health care across the board.”

Smith, who serves as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, went on to point out that Obamacare subsidies that the Democrats want to extend are rife with fraud.

“[T]he waste, fraud, and abuse that’s within the exchanges, it’s unconscionable,” he emphasized. “For example, myself, former Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-Wash.] of Energy and Commerce, and also Jim Jordan [R-Ohio] requested the GAO to investigate the Obamacare exchanges. And what did they find? So much waste. In fact, more than 59,000 dead people were having their health insurance subsidized. You had just one Social Security number that had more than 125 policies attached to it. And guess what? They even attempted to create fake accounts with fake identities and fake Social Security numbers, and 100% of their attempts were approved and enrolled. And guess what? A year later this year, 90% of those are still being subsidized. So the insurance companies are making out like a bandit on that.”

Smith further argued that lawmakers on Capitol Hill will need to be willing to take unpopular actions in order to bring true reform to America’s health care system.

“[W]e have to be willing to take tough, tough steps,” he underscored. “And we need to go after the health insurance companies. We need to investigate them. … They need to justify to Congress their huge premium increases of 20-plus percent this year. Why is this? You have record profits. For example, some of these health insurance companies, just in the last 15 years since passage of Obamacare, their stock price has increased almost 1,000%. They’re making a ton of money at the expense of everyday Americans.”

As for the bill’s chances of passage in the Senate, some liberal outlets are claiming that the legislation will be “dead on arrival.” But some insiders are not quite so sure. One long-time observer of the Hill reminded The Washington Stand that Senate Democrats’ dire warning “is a bid in an ongoing negotiation. House Democrats shut down the government over extending COVID subsidies that pay for abortions and ‘gender transition’ procedures,” he pointed out, “but they caved eventually and reopened the government. So take liberals’ and the mainstream media’s claims that the bill will be DOA in the Senate with a huge grain of salt.”