Is it worth shutting down the government to keep billions in federal cash flowing to health insurers? That’s a question Republicans should be asking Democrats every chance they get.
The minority party has brought business in Washington to a halt as part of a wrongheaded strategy to obscure the out-of-control growth in health insurance costs brought on by Obamacare.
REPUBLICANS ARE PUSHING THESE FIVE DEMOCRATS TO FLIP ON FUNDING BILL
Four years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats green-lit “temporarily” enhanced premium subsidies for exchange coverage as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The enhanced subsidies ensured that no American, regardless of income, would have to pay more than 8.5% of their income for exchange coverage. The cost was massive: $34 billion over the first two years alone.
Democrats set the subsidies to expire at the end of 2022. They extended them through 2025 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed on a party-line vote in 2022.
Republicans have proposed to let those enhanced subsidies expire as the Democrats themselves wrote into the law. Democrats have responded by shutting down the government.
Extending the subsidies permanently would be fiscally reckless. According to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, extending the subsidies even a decade would cost $350 billion. Many of the recipients are relatively well-off. About one-seventh of that cost would go to households that make more than five times the poverty level — roughly $160,000 for a family of four — according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The Trump administration has taken steps to make unsubsidized health coverage more affordable. It’s made more people eligible for low-cost catastrophic health plans. And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act allows low-cost bronze and catastrophic plans to be paired with tax-advantaged health savings accounts, a feature previously reserved only for high-deductible plans.
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Democrats, in other words, have shut down the government over tens of billions in corporate welfare for insurers that they always said would be temporary. And they’ve done so just before several sensible, market-oriented reforms that could make coverage more affordable take effect.
Obamacare’s enhanced subsidies need to expire on schedule at the end of this year. When the smoke clears on the current shutdown, it will be Democrats who pay the political price.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The World’s Medicine Chest: How America Achieved Pharmaceutical Supremacy — and How to Keep It (Encounter 2025). Follow her on X @sallypipes.