Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to extend Obamacare subsidies, and trust me when I tell you that the reason has nothing to do with helping Americans.
They need these subsidies to keep the charade going, to mask the ugly truth that the Affordable Care Act never made health care affordable in the first place. The whole thing has been a disaster from day one, a colossal failure that Democrats are desperate to hide from the public as the government shutdown drags on and millions of Americans are about to get a very rude awakening when they see their real insurance costs.
The sales pitch for Obamacare was slick and simple. Barack Obama stood before the nation and made a promise so specific that there was zero ambiguity. He said premiums would drop by $2,500 per year for the average family by the end of his first term. Not eventually. Not someday. By the end of his first term. Instead, family premiums rose $2,600 by the end of Obama’s second term.
And premiums have continued to climb.
Fast forward to today, and Democrats are in full panic mode. The enhanced subsidies they passed during the pandemic are set to expire at the end of this year, and without them, Americans enrolled in Obamacare marketplaces are staring down premium increases that will more than double their costs. Democrats even shut down the government because, among other things, they want to extend the Obamacare subsidies. Democrats frame this as a fight for working families, but the real fight is to keep those families from realizing just how badly Obamacare failed them.
As someone who is self-employed, I have to get health insurance through the Obamacare marketplace, and I can tell you that my premiums are going up roughly 30% next year, and it has nothing to do with subsidies because I don’t qualify for subsidies.
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You don’t have to be an economist to understand that subsidies do not lower the actual cost of health care. They hide it. They shuffle the financial burden onto taxpayers while insurance companies and bureaucrats rake in the profits. Even with subsidies propping up the system, health care costs for everyday consumers have not improved since Obamacare passed. They have never addressed the skyrocketing cost of medical care itself, which is the underlying problem. Democrats would rather throw more taxpayer money at the symptoms than fix the disease.
Democrats are trying to paint Republicans as the villains in this fight, accusing them of making health care more expensive. That narrative is false. What Republicans are refusing to do is perpetuate a broken system that enriches insurance companies at the expense of working families while pretending it is helping anyone. The real issue is that Obamacare was built on a foundation of false promises and failed economics, and no amount of subsidy money can change that.
Conservatives have been offering real solutions for years, reforms that would actually bring down costs instead of just masking them. Tort reform to reduce frivolous lawsuits would cut down on defensive medicine and unnecessary tests that drive up expenses. Realistic pricing regulations for medical services would bring transparency and competition back into the market, and, of course, no taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants. Stricter eligibility criteria for government assistance would ensure help goes to those who genuinely need it, not to prop up a failing government program. These ideas get dismissed by Democrats because they threaten the very control the left wants to maintain over the health care system.
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The goal should be to lower the actual cost of medical care, which would naturally lead to lower insurance premiums and a sustainable system that works for everyone.
That means getting government out of the way and restoring a health care system that functions on market principles. It also means providing real help to those who cannot care for themselves, not creating a dependency on subsidies that paper over systemic failures. But Democrats cannot afford for Americans to see that. They cannot afford for the public to connect the dots and realize that Obamacare was never about affordable care. It was about control, and they will do anything to keep that control, even if it means shutting down the government to prevent their failure from being exposed.
