Several years ago, Congress passed temporary tax credits to lower the cost of Affordable Care Act plans. However, these tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2025, which will cause premiums to skyrocket. Urge Congress to extend premium tax credits to ensure that Americans can afford essential health care. 

Background:  

In 2022, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act, which enacted temporary advanced premium tax credits that made Affordable Care Act marketplace plans more affordable for nearly 4 million Americans. Now, these tax credits are set to expire at the end of 2025. If Congress fails to extend the tax credits, monthly premiums will increase by 20 to 70 percent. This will cause significant hardship for many families or leave them unable to access life-saving care.  

Estimates suggest that premiums will increase for 3 to 4 million Americans and that people across all racial, geographic, and income groups will be affected – but that low-income people, middle class communities, and Communities of Color will see the greatest increase in uninsurance. The rise in uninsured populations will also create financial challenges for hospitals, many of which are already dealing with recent funding cuts. 

Jewish Values: 

Judaism is clear about the importance of promoting health and wellbeing among all members of society. The verse in Deuteronomy (4:15) “You shall indeed guard your souls,” has traditionally been interpreted as commanding us to protect our health.  

Providing health care is not just an obligation for the patient and the doctor, but for society as well. It is for this reason that Maimonides lists health care among the ten most important communal services that had to be offered by a city to its residents (Mishneh Torah, Sefer Hamadda IV:23). During the long history of the self-governing Jewish community, almost all such communities set up societies to ensure that all their citizens had access to health care. For example, doctors were required to reduce their rates for poor patients and, where that was not sufficient, communal subsidies were established (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 249:16; Responsa Ramat Rahel of Rabbi Eliezer Waldernberg sections 24-25).  

Judaism commands us that when members of a society at large are ill, our responsibility — not only of the medical profession, but of all of us — is to ensure that affordable medical care is available for all. 

Please contact Healthcare Legislative Assistant Sari Rosenberg at srosenberg@rac.org for more information. 

By submitting this form, you are agreeing to receive emails from the RAC and URJ. You can manage your preferences at any time. 

Most elected officials with online contact forms require a prefix to submit a message, so this requirement is part of the VoterVoice platform. For most offices, you may submit any prefix or title up to 30 characters (including gendered, professional, religious, and non-binary prefixes), but a small number of offices only accept certain prefixes. Learn more about this requirement, which is not controlled by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. 

A small number of Capitol Hill offices impose a strict character limit for incoming constituent emails. If you receive an error notification that your message is too long or cannot be sent, please manually shorten the message. This character limit is not controlled by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism or the VoterVoice platform.