For an alternate viewpoint, see “Counterpoint: Republicans Want to Make Health Insurance More Expensive.”
Don’t believe the headlines. The government shutdown is not really about Obamacare. That’s just the pretext.
The shutdown is a tactic employed by the Democratic congressional leadership to create a high-profile platform from which to oppose President Trump. More dangerously, it’s a political trap for the GOP, aimed at influencing next year’s elections.
Healthcare is an issue where voters tend to trust Democrats more than Republicans, because Democrats talk about it a lot more and their “solutions” often sound great (until you look under the hood). And these days, it feels as if healthcare is the only issue Democrats have left, coming after a yearlong streak of Trumpian victories on everything from border security to energy abundance to tax cuts for families.
This makes it troubling that some Republicans are reportedly discussing a possible “compromise” with senior Democrats, in which they would agree to expand Obamacare in exchange for reopening the government.
That would be a mistake.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are proposing that, in exchange for Democrats agreeing to reopen the government, Republicans must agree to a total of $1.5 trillion in additional healthcare spending, including $900 billion to repeal Trump’s Medicaid reforms and provide free healthcare to undocumented immigrants.
If you think that’s a serious offer, I have a bridge to sell you.
Democrats also want $400 billion to extend the so-called “Biden COVID credits.” This is their No. 1 demand, and the reason people think the shutdown is about Obamacare.
The Biden credits are additional subsidies that expand the lavishness and taxpayer cost of the existing Affordable Care Act health insurance premium tax credit program (Obamacare). Created as a pandemic response measure in 2021, with zero Republican support, the additional credits have always been temporary. They expire at the end of the year.
Schumer and company now want them made permanent. If they’re allowed to expire, they claim, there will be a healthcare apocalypse, with exploding insurance premiums and millions of people losing coverage.
Those claims are greatly exaggerated.
The credits did two primary things. First, they created new “zero-dollar plans” (100 percent free insurance for individuals making less than $60,000 a year or $130,000 for a family of four). Second, they eliminated the income cap, making sliding-scale premium subsidies available to those with higher incomes.
The changes doubled the size of the Obamacare population and increased its cost by $35 billion a year, every penny of which goes straight to an insurance company.
The extra money has spawned mass enrollment fraud, driven up healthcare prices, and greatly enriched the insurance industry.
The credits should be allowed to expire. Their justification, the pandemic, is behind us. And, they’re costly, inflationary, and fraud-prone.
You can tell the shutdown isn’t really about Obamacare because of how the two parties act. Republicans have offered to discuss ways to address any legitimate concerns about disruptions as soon as the government reopens. Democrats are saying nix to that: “Extension first.”
If they truly want to return to work and prevent a healthcare “apocalypse,” they could do it today. Just vote for the Republicans’ clean funding bill, which, in itself, is uncontroversial.
Any bipartisan “compromise” extending the Biden credits is sure to disappoint and divide the Republican faithful. It would diminish Trump’s political capital and stall his policy momentum, giving Democrats a political boost.
A few stray Republicans are promoting the notion that retaining the credits is vital to the continued GOP control of Congress. This defies common sense. It would betray Trump’s 2024 election victory, which was to end, not perpetuate, Biden’s numerous policy errors. Conservatives are united in opposing an extension.
No Republican has ever voted for Obamacare. Doing so now would make the party complicit in the controversial program’s flaws and harms. From its earliest days, the Affordable Care Act has been stained by steep out-of-pocket costs, limited access to doctors and hospitals, and rising claim-denial rates (a tenfold increase since 2015, with one in three claims being denied).
When the credits were created, Obamacare was quietly collapsing. Enrollment was shrinking. Prices were rising. Patients were voting with their feet. Then came Biden’s lavish credits. The exodus immediately reversed, creating the illusion that the program was popular and working great. And then came a massive wave of enrollment fraud, resulting in 12 million phantom enrollees.
Without the credits, will premiums explode? No. The subsidies, which mask the high cost of premiums ($25,000 a year, on average), will shrink slightly. But they’ll still be very generous, covering 80 percent of the cost. For the lowest-income enrollees, their share will increase modestly, by a dollar or two per day.
Will millions lose coverage? No. Some will have to pay more for their coverage. Many will choose not to re-enroll when they see the price, which tells you how little they value the coverage. Most have access to other subsidized options, such as workplace insurance and Medicaid.
This shutdown is not about Obamacare. It’s a political trap set by Democrats to lure Republicans into endorsing Obamacare, and then to use that mistake to retake Congress.
Instead of doubling down on what amounts to an insurance industry enrichment scheme, they should pass real, free-market health reforms that fund patients, not insurance companies. We could call it the Actually Affordable Care Act.
Let the credits expire.
