As Congress wrangles over government funding, Democrats have drawn their line in the sand: extend the “enhanced” Obamacare subsidies or keep the government shut down. When Democrats passed government-run health insurance along partisan lines, they shrewdly bought off insurance agencies with generous taxpayer subsidies of 400% of the federal poverty line. The most recent subsidies passed under former President Joe Biden extended subsidies to Americans making upward of $500,000 a year.
The subsidies in question were temporary COVID-19-era expansions of the Affordable Care Act’s premium credits. They were always meant to expire. Yet Democrats are now demanding that Republicans make them permanent, effectively turning a pandemic emergency measure into a new entitlement. That would be a colossal strategic blunder that would give Democrats a victory they could never win themselves, while making Americans pay for it.
When Obamacare became law in 2010, Americans were promised lower costs and greater competition. Instead, we got the opposite. Premiums for individual plans have more than doubled, and choices have dwindled as smaller insurers have been driven out. For 2026, just four of 312 insurers have requested to lower premiums, while most are seeking double-digit increases — some as high as 50%.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR LETTING ADDED OBAMACARE SUBSIDIES LAPSE
Meanwhile, Obamacare has added more than $1.5 trillion to the national debt.
The COVID-19-era expansion of these subsidies, originally jammed through in the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan and extended under the Inflation Reduction Act, took a bad policy and made it worse. These expansions weren’t even targeted at the poor. In fact, households earning up to $500,000 a year can still qualify for government aid. Not a single Republican voted for either of those bills. Yet Democrats are now demanding that the GOP “save” the subsidies they passed on a party-line vote.
Worse still, these subsidies remain morally compromised. Obamacare continues to funnel taxpayer dollars to more than 1,000 abortion-covering insurance plans. Nearly a hundred pro-life organizations have called on Congress to end this gross abuse of taxpayer funds.
Democrats broke the healthcare system by replacing choice with coercion. Then they used the pandemic as an excuse to expand government. Now they want Republicans to clean up their mess and pay for it indefinitely.
Republicans in Congress must hold firm. If they cave and agree to extend these subsidies, they will not be applauded for bipartisanship; they will only be blamed as Obamacare inevitably continues its downward spiral. Making matters worse, we are already hearing some lobby for price controls on prescription drugs as a “pay-for” for these costly subsidies, piling socialist policy upon socialist policy, a formula that has devastated innovation wherever it’s been tried.
Price controls, or “most favored nation” pricing in the language of the Washington, D.C., swamp, would gut American research and development that have produced lifesaving cures and treatments once thought impossible. They would push drug innovation overseas, where Chinese pharmaceutical companies already operate clinical trials 200% to 300% faster and at 30% lower cost than their U.S. counterparts.
China’s lack of ethical standards should never become America’s competitive benchmark. But if Washington, D.C., keeps layering red tape on innovators and dictating prices by fiat, that’s exactly what will happen: American companies will take their research to Beijing.
America is the birthplace of companies that have saved millions of lives. We should embrace that achievement and build upon it, not punish it. The way to lower healthcare costs is not by imitating socialist price schemes but by unleashing free-market competition, transparency, and direct-to-consumer innovation.
This shutdown debate offers a defining test. Will Republicans stand for fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, and the sanctity of life, or will they get suckered into subsidizing the Left’s failures once again?
GOP UNDER PRESSURE TO PREVENT OBAMACARE SUBSIDIES FROM FUNDING ABORTIONS
It’s time to stop rewarding bad policy. Don’t bail out Obamacare. Don’t surrender American innovation. Don’t hand our drug-making industry to the Chinese Communist Party.
Americans deserve leaders with the courage to say no, and the conviction to build something better.
Marc Short served as director of legislative affairs for President Donald Trump. He is chairman of Advancing American Freedom, the conservative advocacy group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence.
