Senate Republicans shafted millions of Americans last week, and their House counterparts are poised to repeat the deed before leaving town on another paid vacation. On the way out the door, they’ve given Democrats a big Hanukkah gift while stuffing lumps of coal into the Christmas stockings of millions of their constituents.
As a result of their failure to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, which expires at the end of the year, an estimated 20 million Americans will see the cost of their healthcare skyrocket. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 2 million people will be priced out of the market and forced to go without coverage.
Many who live in smaller communities and rural areas will see premiums soar, making health insurance unaffordable. As a result, fewer may seek care, hospitals will be forced to raise prices and cut services, or even close.
ACA provides many benefits for seniors, a potent voting bloc with high turnout in primary and general elections, and their numbers are growing.
Call it partisan politics, conservative ideology, or protecting corporate donors, Republicans remain largely opposed to an extension. Democrats have seized it as a top issue for the upcoming Congressional elections and believe it will help them knock off vulnerable Republicans in swing districts.
They’re calling the issue “affordability,” a theme that served them well in several elections in 2025. US President Donald Trump rode that message to victory in 2024 but now dismisses it as a Democratic “con” and “hoax.”
Majority of pollsters disapprove of President Trump's handling of the economy
Polls consistently show voters disagree with his boasts that he has brought prices down. It’s reflected in a majority telling pollsters that they disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy. Complaints are growing in his base that he is too interested in foreign affairs and partying with his fellow billionaires and tech moguls, and ignoring pocketbook issues.
He went to a Pocono Mountains casino in Pennsylvania last week to tell the faithful that he has cut their cost of living, but facts don’t support that. Yes, the price of eggs is down, but everything else is going up. Half a dozen recent polls show fewer than one in three Americans approve of his handling of the economy.
He is woefully uninformed or misinformed, and he is unquestionably inexperienced in the economic realities of daily life. Trump has probably never pushed a shopping cart down a grocery store aisle to do the family’s shopping or pumped his own gas.
Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist, told The New York Times, “The more he denies that there is an affordability problem, the more out of touch he seems.”
When asked what he would tell Americans hit by the higher costs of healthcare and the looming spike in premiums, Trump told reporters, “Obamacare is horrible health insurance.” He seems unaware of the nation’s healthcare crisis that he has helped create. But don’t worry, he personally already has the best coverage money can buy – and the government pays for it.
Trump and his fellow Republicans have been trying to kill Obamacare since its inception and failed on nearly a hundred separate votes, although they have succeeded in whittling away parts of it.
Trump, as recently as last week, has been promising to come up with an alternative plan – Trumpcare? – since his first term, but so far, nothing that can pass even a Republican-controlled
Congress.
Some centrist Republicans, fearing the wrath of swing-district voters hit by soaring healthcare costs, would like a deal on the subsidies. However, neither their leadership nor the White House seems interested.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who is among a handful of Republicans who support extending the subsidies, said if his GOP colleagues block it, “I think it will be used like a sledgehammer a year from now. The reality will be bad.”
Rep Mike Flood, another Nebraska Republican, reports getting hundreds of constituent calls urging him to protect their healthcare coverage.
It may be that Trump is loath to have any hand in rescuing a popular program named for his nemesis.
House Republicans may try to offer a brief extension of the subsidies this week, but it is likely to be larded down with so many poison pills, including reduced coverage, increased copays, and new abortion restrictions, that it will be dead on arrival.
House Speaker Mike Johnson insists that the ACA “broke the American healthcare system,” but millions of Americans disagree, and their numbers are growing.
Repeated Republican efforts to kill Obamacare seem to have backfired. A survey this summer by the independent health research group KFF showed it was preferred two-to-one by all adults. Trump’s popularity has been moving in the opposite direction, with his approval rating hitting 42%, the lowest of his term.
Among the hardest hit will be voters in Republican districts. The budget reconciliation bill (the misnamed Big Beautiful Bill) had blocked subsidy renewal and further eroded the ACA. Republican opposition to Democratic efforts to restore that funding led to the longest-ever government shutdown.
Following the Senate defeat of two bills to fund the subsidies, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said, “Senate Republicans just shoved the American people off the side of a cliff with no parachute and with an anchor tied to their feet.”
That shove gave Democrats what they hope will be their winning issue to help them take back control of the House and Senate.
Obamacare was unpopular when introduced in 2010. With the help of a conservative avalanche of negative ads filled with false warnings of “death panels,” Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate.
Democrats hope to reverse that, and most polls say that could happen.
That’s not the only health-related issue worrying voters. The administration has been cutting food stamps for low-income families, slashing Medicaid, and talking about privatizing Social Security. And don’t forget that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vax warriors are bringing back measles, halting child inoculations, canceling research, and driving top scientists out of public service.
We will have to wait just over 10 months to learn whether the Republican retreat on healthcare funding will resonate with voters and produce a healthy Hanukkah miracle next year.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.