Darrell Issa’s long record of voting to repeal Obamacare

In March 2017, 300 demonstrators toting homemade tombstones lay in the grass outside California Rep. Darrell Issa’s field office. They were protesting his vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and they returned every week until Issa announced that he would not seek reelection in 2018.

Now, Issa is back in Congress, and his mission to defund and dismantle the popular health care program continues.

Issa was one of 196 House Republicans to vote this month against a bipartisan proposal to reinstate Obamacare tax credits. The credits reduced the monthly cost of insurance plans for about 22 million Americans, including 8,000 of Issa’s own constituents. Some have seen their monthly premiums quadruple since the credits expired on Jan. 1.

The proposal Issa rejected would have extended the credits for three more years. It passed the House, but now faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

When the extension was being debated, Issa backed an alternate proposal, the stated goal of which was to eliminate Obamacare entirely.

“There will be less subsidy, there will be better scrutiny over fraud, and there’s intended to be a real phase out of Obamacare,” Issa said in a Dec. 9 interview with Fox Business.

Issa and other Republicans have repeatedly claimed that Obamacare credits are rife with fraud. Health policy experts disagree. Michael Gusmano, a professor of health policy at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, told CNBC that the degree of fraud is nominal and it would be better to improve Obamacare’s security measures than cut the subsidies.

“It really is trivial, the scope of fraud,” Gusmano said. “It’s just a scare tactic to justify the reduction of the federal government’s role in subsidizing health insurance.”

Between 2011 and 2017, Issa voted 17 times to abolish Obamacare.

In President Donald Trump’s first term, Issa was a proponent of the ill-fated American Health Care Act, a bill that would have partially repealed Obamacare. The Center for American Progress projected that nearly 37,000 people in Issa’s district would lose insurance under the bill.

Issa was initially skeptical of the American Health Care Act, but later cast the tie-breaking vote that helped it pass the House. The bill died in the Senate when it was dramatically voted down by Republican Sen. John McCain.

Issa has shown antipathy toward other government health care programs.

Last year, Issa supported the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), which made sweeping cuts to Medicaid. An analysis by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee found that more than 24,000 people in his district are likely to become uninsured as a result of the law. That number swells to more than 32,000 when the impact of expiring Obamacare tax credits is factored in.

Rural hospitals that depend on Medicaid reimbursements to operate are threatened by OBBB as well. Two hospitals in Issa’s district, one in Murrieta and another in Temecula, are expected to see a combined $14 million dip in revenue.

Issa is running for another term this year. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) recognizes him as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.

Issa carried CA-48 with nearly 60% of the vote in 2024. A redraw of congressional maps in the state is expected to make the district more competitive.