Here we are again, watching Democrats and their media cheerleaders sound the alarm bells as the clock ticks toward a government shutdown. The Schumer Shutdown is looming over Washington, and the left is doing what it does best: blaming Republicans while painting apocalyptic pictures of what will happen if they do not get their way.
This time, one of the key sticking points is the continuation of Obamacare subsidies, and the Democratic Party is in full panic mode trying to convince Americans that the sky will fall if Congress does not keep propping up this failing law.
“If Republicans in Congress refuse to join us to extend the health care tax credits, more than 20 million Americans will see their premiums more than double,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) posted on X. “We must act now to protect affordable health care for Americans.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren chimed in with her usual dramatics as well.
“Your health care premiums could MORE THAN DOUBLE thanks to Donald Trump,” she tweeted. “That’s the health care affordability crisis that Democrats are fighting to fix.”
But here is the thing: the real crisis is not the lack of subsidies. The real crisis is Obamacare itself.
Health insurance costs have been skyrocketing for years, and it is not because of a lack of subsidies. It is because of Obamacare. According to analysis from the Kaiser Foundation, the average per-person premium in 2010 ranged from approximately $136 per month in Alabama to more than $400 per month in Vermont and Massachusetts, with the average across all states sitting at $215 per member per month. Many years ago, before marriage and family, that is roughly what I was paying for my health insurance.
Then Obamacare happened.
Today, I still have an individual (long story) plan, but it costs over $600 a month now and that’s for less coverage than what I used to get. Adding insult to injury, I learned months ago that my monthly premium will increase to nearly $900 per month next year.
This is what Obamacare did.
It forced people to buy health insurance and made it supposedly affordable by subsidizing it, which only made it more expensive. The same thing has happened with the cost of education. When the government steps in and subsidizes something, the actual cost does not go down. It goes up.
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Everything about Obamacare is a disaster. Health insurance today costs more, and yet coverage is garbage compared to what it used to be. Plans that once had reasonable deductibles and co-pays now come with sky-high out-of-pocket costs and limited networks. Obamacare was supposed to make health care more affordable. Instead, all it did was inflate the costs by subsidizing it, creating a system where insurers could charge whatever they wanted because the government (read: the taxpayers) would pick up the tab. This is on every Democrat who voted to pass Obamacare, and now they are back asking for more money to keep this broken system limping along.
At this point, the debate should not be over whether to continue Obamacare subsidies. The debate should be about repealing Obamacare entirely and starting over with a system that actually works for the American people. The problem is not that Republicans are refusing to extend subsidies. The problem is that Obamacare has failed, and Democrats refuse to admit it. Instead of propping up a law that has driven up costs and reduced the quality of coverage, Congress should be focused on getting rid of it and implementing real reforms that will bring down costs and give Americans access to quality health care without forcing them to rely on government handouts. Obamacare is the problem, and it is about time Washington recognized that and did something about it.
