Wittman Voted 60 Times to Undo the Affordable Care Act. Then He Backed Extending Its Subsidies

In 2017, U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland (1st District in Virginia), touted voting to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act 60 times. Nearly a decade later, he was one of just 17 Republicans nationwide to vote to extend expired ACA subsidies, before Congress ultimately let them lapse.

U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, discusses housing policy in Henrico, Virginia on July 10, 2026. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)

The expired subsidies have spurred 94,000 Virginians to drop their insurance so far and are the latest healthcare issue congressional candidates in Virginia and elsewhere must contend with on the campaign trail.

“Every House Republican in a competitive race is having to walk a tightrope on healthcare affordability,” said Erin Covey, a Cook Political Report analyst.

University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato, who helms Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said that Wittman’s January ACA vote is “a recognition that his district is competitive enough that he can’t stick to (President Donald) Trump and GOP congressional positions 100% of the time.”

With polling indicating healthcare affordability and access among top concerns for voters this year, Democrats have seized on the issue as a potentially winning platform and pushed Republicans on the defensive.

Why Wittman broke from the pack and how it could impact the VA-01 race

While Wittman still doesn’t fully embrace the ACA, he said he voted to extend the subsidy primarily because of how it would impact his constituents in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District.

“I did not believe families should face dramatic increases in their health insurance costs without a transition,” Wittman said this week.

When asked if he would back future repeal efforts, he didn’t clarify, but  shared broad health policy goals if re-elected.

“Going forward, I will continue working to make healthcare more affordable, accessible, and transparent by increasing competition, expanding patient choice, improving price transparency, and giving patients and families greater control over their healthcare decisions,” Wittman said.

Data shows 94,000 Virginians have dropped their ACA insurance since last year

Of the 16 other Republicans to side with Democrats on the recent ACA vote, only four of them were in the House for the 2017 repeal attempt.

Pennsylvania Representative Brian Fitzpatrick and Ohio Representative Dave Joyce voted against the repeal nearly 10 years ago, while California Representative David Valadao joined Wittman in voting for it.

Valadao then lost his reelection bid in the 2018 midterms, when Democrats made big gains in both congressional chambers. Both healthcare and the economy were campaign-year focal points.

Covey attributes some of Valadao’s ousting to his repeal vote, while Wittman was in a safer seat at the time and less vulnerable to pushback for it.

Though Virginia’s 1st District still has a Republican lean, it has grown more politically purple in recent years, so it’s unclear how voters there will judge his turnabout vote at the ballot box.

Wittman’s Democratic challenger, prosecutor Shannon Taylor, doesn’t think he should get too much praise for his shift in stance.

“Now, with an election around the corner and families facing higher premiums, he wants to try and change his tune,” she said. “We deserve a representative who will lower costs and expand care, not one who brags about their votes to rip it away.”

Recent KFF polling found that 55% of independent voters see healthcare costs as an important candidate discussion topic while courting their votes this year, while 60% of democrats say the same and 37% of republicans agree.

Democrats have hammered Republicans all year on their failure to renew the expired subsidies as well as their votes for H.R.1, the Trump-backed reconciliation bill that entails forthcoming changes to Medicaid.

About 300,000 Virginians are at risk of losing that health insurance next year while 5,800 lawful immigrants are guaranteed to lose it next month. The bill’s changes to hospital funding mechanisms may also contribute to potential closure or reduced services of rural hospitals and a predicted $31 billion reduction in the state’s Medicaid funding over the next decade.

As H.R. 1 was debated, Wittman — and incumbent U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach, who is running in a competitive district — pushed back on aspects of the bill, before ultimately voting for it.

As a compromise, Congress also created the Rural Health Transformation Fund, a $50 billion investment for states over the next five years.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Hall said that Wittman and Kiggans had “put Virginians first and delivered a huge win for rural communities,” as $122 million in RHTF funding disbursements were announced last week.

Wittman has also backed the “Lower Health Care Premiums For All Americans Act,” which passed the House last December but has not yet become law. That bill would expand association health plans by allowing small businesses and self-employed people to band together to purchase insurance.

Health care fight intensifies as Congress weighs GOP-backed insurance changes

Some analysts describe it as a way to chip away at the ACA, but Wittman and others see it as a different pathway to help people access care.

“(Small companies) just can’t band together in large enough numbers to get the advantages of these larger plans,” Wittman said. “Anything that you buy in bulk or in mass quantities, you get a reduction in price. That’s what the idea is here.”

Since the passage of the ACA, insurers have not been able to use a person’s health risk to determine the premiums they pay.

Wittman said that his issue with the current makeup of government-funded healthcare is that it is “a system based on reimbursement for treatment.”

Having healthier and less healthy people in the same insurance pools is meant to drive down costs broadly, Georgetown University researcher Sabrina Corlette said.

“We all get older and sicker,” she said. “(The Democrats’ approach) is recognizing that you might be subsidizing a sicker person today, but someone else will be subsidizing you down the road.”

As midterm elections draw nearer and candidate debates grow fiercer, campaign messaging to the public across party lines has honed in on affordability.

Voters are experiencing inflation in gas, groceries, and healthcare costs, made worse by Trump’s war with Iran and his directives to Congress like H.R. 1, which will likely be reflected in the way they vote this fall.

”It’s all connected,” Sabato said.

Though Wittman’s district “is not quite a tossup yet,” Sabato said, “if Shannon Taylor wins, it’s because this is such an anti-Trump year.”

by Charlotte Rene Woods, Virginia Mercury

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