Tag: obamacare

Congress Failed to Extend the Health Care Subsidies. Now What?

Posted on by Lone Candle

By letting the Covid-era boost to ACA subsidies end, Republicans are making health insurance for 24 million people much much more expensive. These are people who: don’t get subsidized health insurance at work, make too much for Medicaid, but also too much for regular ACA subsidies. Many are small business owners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59uBAuavn2Y

Architect of Obamacare: Health Care Is Still a Mess | The David Frum Show

Posted on by Lone Candle

For low-value medical care, it helps to have consumer skin in the game, but that isn’t what drives healthcare costs. Healthcare costs are driven by needed care and not the overuse of unneeded care.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyY05fD9dk4

Capitol agenda: Thune says shutdown talks are picking up

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The ongoing federal shutdown could cost the U.S. economy between $7 billion and $14 billion, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/29/congress/shutdown-talks-thune-democrats-snap-deadline-00626811

TrumpRx Is Obamacare in Trump’s Handwriting

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Trump announced the next in a long line of vanity projects: TrumpRX, a forthcoming, federally branded website where Pfizer sells steeply discounted drugs in exchange for a three-year exemption from his proposed 100 percent tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Imagine a strip mall furniture store with a permanent, flashy 70-percent-off sale, masking the fact that prices were inflated in the first place. TrumpRx, slated to launch in early 2026, is no different—a government-run platform that promises savings while hiding costs.

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TrumpRx isn’t healthcare reform or even a program in any real sense. It’s a carve-out for one company. Under the agreement, Pfizer will list a large share of its primary care and select specialty drugs at deep discounts on a federal site that redirects patients to Pfizer’s direct-to-consumer checkout.

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The savings are shaky because that money has to come from somewhere. Part of it, certainly, is just the market advantage of being exempted from a 100 percent tax that all your competitors are forced to pay. Any savings beyond that will be carved out of something else—less research, higher prices on other drugs, or hidden costs buried elsewhere in the system.

And for most people, the ‘discounts’ aren’t really discounts. Roughly 90 percent of Americans are insured, and their co-pays are almost always cheaper than TrumpRx’s cash prices. Medicaid patients already get the steepest rebates—more than 60 percent off by law—so TrumpRx adds little there. That leaves the approximately 27 million uninsured Americans.

But even for the uninsured, the math falls apart: A $6,000 arthritis drug at “half price” is still $3,000 in cash, a stretch on any budget. Eucrisa at $162 on TrumpRx beats few insurance copays. And $499/month for Wegovy (semaglutide) on TrumpRx compares poorly to the $25 many insured patients now pay. And all of this bypasses the way Americans actually get prescriptions. CVS, Walgreens, and the rest are cut out entirely, replaced by a federally branded coupon pop-up that punts you to a manufacturer’s checkout page. TrumpRx looks like a deal, but in practice, it helps almost no one.”

https://reason.com/2025/10/02/trumprx-is-obamacare-in-trumps-handwriting/

Democrats Shut Down the Government to Obscure Obamacare’s Failures

Posted on by Lone Candle

“We’re seeing more evidence for this adage as the government shut downs following Democrats’ refusal to vote for a spending bill that did not include an extension of “temporary” Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, subsidies passed during the pandemic.
Those enhanced subsidies were passed as a temporary measure as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in March 2021, and then extended through the end of 2025 by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

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Making these subsidies permanent would not be cheap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cost $340 billion a year.

On the flip side, letting the tax credits expire would result in about 1.6 million higher-income earners losing subsidies completely. Millions more would continue receiving a smaller subsidy and see their premiums rise as a result.”

https://reason.com/2025/10/01/democrats-shut-down-the-government-to-obscure-obamacares-failures/

Why Voters Will Feel the Impact of GOP Health Cuts Before the Midterms

Posted on by Lone Candle

Why Voters Will Feel the Impact of GOP Health Cuts Before the Midterms

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/18/trump-gop-healthcare-cuts-00569743

Health care costs could spike for millions of families

Posted on by Lone Candle

“For millions of families, a spike in health care costs might be around the corner because crucial subsidies are set to expire at the end of next year. Some families will see their premiums rise by thousands of dollars; others might lose their insurance altogether.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act, which included a provision that enhanced the premium tax credit — a piece of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that subsidized the cost of premiums for some lower- and middle-income families. The Biden-era enhancements, which essentially expanded the number of people who qualify for the tax credit, were originally set to expire at the end of 2022, but Congress extended them through 2025 when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act. (For families at or slightly above the poverty line, the enhanced tax credit subsidizes the full premium. For people making more than 400 percent of the poverty line — people who were previously ineligible for this subsidy — it caps their premiums to 8.5 percent of their income.)

The enhanced premium tax credits contributed to a record number of insured people in the United States. In February 2021, before Congress expanded the premium tax credits, 11.2 million people were enrolled in health coverage through ACA marketplaces. By 2024, that number shot up to 20.8 million people.

There are many reasons for the dramatic increase in marketplace coverage — including the fact that millions of people were disenrolled from Medicaid coverage after Covid emergency measures lapsed and had to turn to other forms of insurance, including the marketplace — but the enhanced premium tax credit played a critical role. Its expansion was the main reason so many more people were able to enroll in health care coverage from the ACA marketplace, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

If Congress allows the enhanced premium tax credits to expire, millions of people will see a noticeable rise in out-of-pocket expenses. Many will likely lose their coverage, and that’s without considering how much more will be at stake if Medicaid gets slashed as well. For low-income families, particularly those who live just above the poverty line, that could be a nightmare.”

https://www.vox.com/policy/387424/enhanced-premium-tax-credit-health-care-marketplace-aca