As millions of Americans open notices about their 2026 health insurance premiums, the sticker shock is real. Average out-of-pocket premiums are expected to more than double — $888 annually in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026 — due to the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. The political fight over these subsidies has dominated headlines and even triggered a government shutdown.
But as Washington debates the critical question of how much Americans should pay for health ...
healthcare
How Republicans can make health care affordable
As the government shutdown drags on, lawmakers remain locked in a standoff over whether to extend ObamaCare subsidies. Supporters of these taxpayer-provided subsidies claim they’re the fix for rising health costs when, in fact, they only mask rising costs. ObamaCare is the primary reason costs are rising.
Congress faces a choice: Keep pouring taxpayer dollars into a failing, unaffordable health care system, or take this opportunity to fix the struc...
Democratic senators head to Florida to highlight ObamaCare price spike
A trio of Democratic senators — Chris Murphy (Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Tina Smith (Minn.) — traveled to South Florida on Monday to address rising health care costs amid the government shutdown.
In a video Murphy posted to social platform X, the Connecticut lawmaker said they traveled to the area to speak with “regular Floridians” about impending premium increases.
“I’m here because I think that nobody should go bankrupt over a bad medical diagnosis,” Wa...
If taxpayers must keep subsidizing health care, they deserve to see the prices
The government shutdown has continued for weeks with no end in sight. Although Affordable Care Act subsidies have been at the center of the debate, one of the most basic questions remains unanswered: Where is the money actually going?
And we cannot answer that, because the U.S. still lacks real price transparency in health care.
In 2024, the federal government spent roughly $125 billion on Affordable Care Act subsidies. According to the Congressional Budget Offic...
Reestablishing the dignity of work
The late Charlie Kirk warned that a dangerous disease was spreading through America — a rising generation adrift, disconnected from community, stuck in stalled mobility, and cut off from opportunity. His warning has only grown more urgent with time.
One of the central engines of this decline is ObamaCare. Passed in 2010, it allowed and even incentivized states to enroll able-bodied adults in Medicaid without work requirements. In doing so, Washington turned a focused safety ne...
Senate Republican ‘open’ to conversations about extending ACA subsidies
Republican Sen. Katie Britt (Ala.) said Sunday she is "open" to conversations on extending Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies amid the government shutdown.
“I'm absolutely open to having [a] conversation, but we're not going to extend a program that is wrought with fraud, waste and abuse,” Britt told Dana Bash on CNN's "State of the Union." “There would have to be adjustments to this program to make it make sense for the American people.”
According to health poli...
Greene rebukes Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar bailout for Argentina
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sharply criticized the Trump administration on Thursday for seeking to provide as much as $40 billion in financing for Argentina to help the Latin American ally stabilize its turbulent financial markets.
Greene — a staunch Trump ally who’s bucked her party on numerous issues in recent weeks — argued Argentina should not benefit from taxpayer dollars while Americans are struggling back at home. She said that’s antithetical to the “America ...
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...
MAHA is nothing more than empty rhetoric leading health care on a dangerous course
Over my career, I have worked as a primary care physician, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and an executive at CVS Health. So by all means, yes, let’s Make America Healthy Again. But if that’s truly the goal, then the Trump administration’s approach, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a farce.
Despite lofty slogans, there is no clear or coherent health policy coming out of this administration. Instead, we are seeing a patchwork of marginal reforms paired with sweepin...
How to reopen the government: Rebrand Obamacare as ‘TrumpCare’
As the first shutdown since 2009 rolls on, reopening the government will likely hinge on Democrats’ success convincing President Trump to learn to love a program that he has repeatedly attempted to destroy: Obamacare.
To do that, Democrats can lean on the type of strategic flattery employed by certain U.S. companies and world leaders to gain edge in their dealings with Trump. In short, Democrats’ best chance to break the impasse is by convincing President Trump tha...