For more than a month, Democrats in Congress have attempted to manufacture a health care policy crisis to justify a politically motivated government shutdown. Their price for agreeing to reopen the government? $1.5 trillion in additional government health care spending.
President Trump has successfully called their bluff – and offered an inspiring alternative vision.
Republicans are following the President’s example. They’re not giving in to the Democrats’ health care demands, which will only exacerbate the very real health care affordability crisis that Democratic policies created in the first place.
The shutdown has never really been about health care.
On September 30, Democrats voted to shut down the government by opposing a clean continuing resolution that would have kept federal agencies running at current spending levels. Orchestrated by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the shutdown is his way of appeasing the more radical voices in his own party.
Back in March, nine Senate Democrats, including Schumer, did the sensible thing and voted to advance a clean spending bill that funded government agencies for the duration of 2025. Yet because Trump eventually signed that bill, the Democratic base became irate, including strong progressive voices like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Six months later, when it came time to pass another funding bill, Schumer found himself in a box. He could not vote yes again and survive politically. With his back against the wall, he chose to shut down the government for political purposes, no matter who was hurt.
To justify the move, he and his fellow Democratic leaders claimed it was essential to averting an impending health care "crisis.” This gave them an excuse to “stand up to Trump” and, they hoped, rally millions of Americans to their side. They expected a huge political win, but they miscalculated.
And what is this alleged “crisis,” exactly? The long-planned expiration of an expensive set of temporary, pandemic-era health insurance subsidies. Enacted in 2021, they are scheduled to end January 1, 2026. Allowing that to happen, Schumer and company claim, will cause insurance prices to “skyrocket” and cause millions to “lose” their coverage. In reality, all that will happen is subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance policies will just go back to where they stood five years ago, when the pandemic began.
A CMS fact sheet explains that, even with the expiration of the temporarily enhanced subsidies, enrollees will have access to more options and lower premiums than they did before the pandemic. Sixty percent of applicants will have access to a plan that costs them less than $50 a month out-of-pocket. Hardly a crisis.
Admittedly, insurers do face a “crisis,” in that they will miss out on $35 billion a year in extra income, a large portion of which they bank for 12 million enrollees who never file a medical claim.
It’s ironic, because it was Democrats themselves who created the health care policies that have led to this supposed “crisis.” They created the ACA. They created the extra subsidies. They made them temporary. Republicans had nothing to do with it.
It’s odd now to hear Democrats decry the prospect of going back to the Obamacare of five years ago as a “crisis.”
Even odder is their demand that taxpayers keep sending billions in “temporary” funding to Big Insurance. And odder still: shutting the government to ensure continued subsidies for Americans with six-figure incomes. This is the party of the little guy?
The 2024 election was a referendum on the status quo in Washington, a status quo that was making life more expensive for everyday Americans, health care included. President Trump has risen to the occasion by reversing, not rubber-stamping, inflationary policies like the ACA add-ons.
The president has not been afraid to debunk the fake urgency and false claims. Already, he has increased the quality and accessibility of health care for millions of Americans with his recently enacted Working Family Tax Cuts, which, along with many other great reforms, focuses federal health programs on those who need it most by trimming waste, fraud, and abuse and lets millions of Americans have a tax-free Health Savings Account.
One of the bill’s better, little-known reforms: a tax-code fix that enables millions of patients to access their favorite primary care doctors directly, without having to ask an insurer for permission. And following enactment of the law in July, Trump didn’t rest but quickly moved to restore access to affordable alternatives to Obamacare while also easing restrictions on the most affordable ACA plans for an estimated three million Americans.
This is real change.
Politically, these kinds of sensible solutions beat the costly failures of Obamacare. Voters want affordable, personalized care. Trump’s policies deliver it. Schumer’s don’t.
Republicans should continue to follow President Trump’s lead. Keep calling the Democrats’ shutdown bluff. Reject their cynical health care demands and reverse Biden’s wasteful, inflationary policies. Keep replacing those policies with sensible reforms that reduce the cost of living for all Americans.
In short, keep delivering results for the American people.
Lauren Stewart is senior federal affairs liaison at Americans for Prosperity. Andy Koenig is a former special assistant to President Trump for legislative affairs and a current partner at Kwinn Consulting.
