The government shutdown is holding health care hostage 

Health insurance is supposed to help families, not bully them. Yet when big insurers, or their lobby in Washington, don’t get the policy outcome they want, they reach for the same lever: higher premiums.  

That isn’t care. That’s pressure — and patients feel it first. 

We have seen this before. In October 2017, the administration cut off cost-sharing reduction payments. Carriers answered by “silver-loading” the next year, piling the missing dollars onto sil...