Why my health premium is set to skyrocket

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The government has been shut down for over a month, millions of Americans are bracing for skyrocketing health care costs, and unless Congress acts, I’ll be one of them. So, how on Earth did we get here?

To start, let’s go back to 2010, when I was a small child who didn’t have to worry about understanding the word "deductible". That year, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare. The law established marketplaces where people could buy health insurance if they didn’t get it through work, Medicare or Medicaid. It also gave tax credits—or a dollar amount you subtract from how much taxes you pay—to lots of people who got insurance this way.

By 2014, those marketplaces were up and running. That year alone, over 5.4 million people saved an average of $276 per month thanks to the credits, according to data from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (Fun fact: the website where I got this data has a banner on it blaming Democrats for the shutdown, even as Republicans work to block funding for these tax credits. More on that in a minute!)

Then in 2021, Congress poured a lot more funding into these tax credits. They increased the tax credits that enrollees got and made more enrollees eligible. From 2021 to 2025, the total annual premium tax credits that Marketplace enrollees received went up by about $87 billion, and the number of Americans getting these tax credits went up by about 12 million.

The catch? Those enhanced tax credits were only extended through the end of 2025, which is less than two months away. As Congress negotiated budget legislation to stop the government from shutting down, voters pressured Democrats to fund health care and stand up to Republican lawmakers aiming to gut health care spending. So, Democrats insisted that they would only vote for budget legislation if it included funding for these ACA tax credits. Republicans refused, and the government shut down.

#healthcare #medicaid #politics

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