Why Democrats are presenting the government shutdown as a fight for Medicare

Hours after the federal government shutdown, Julio Fuentes was just steps from the United States Capitol to deliver an urgent message about the bloc of Hispanic voters who helped the Republican Party rise to power last year.

He warned that those votes are at risk if Congress does not approve a law that maintains monthly costs for marketplace plans established by the ACA for about 4.7 million people in their home state of Florida, which have that coverage.

“Hispanic voters helped Donald Trump return to the White House,” said Fuentes, president of the Florida Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “Republican leaders would do well to keep Medicaid coverage accessible, and their voters will remember when legislative elections come closer.”

With less than a month for many people to choose their medical plan for next year, Democrats in Congress blocked the approval of funds for the government to pressure Republicans. The point is that billions of dollars in federal subsidies have, in recent years, dramatically reduced monthly costs and contributed to a record number of people with medical insurance.

Democrats see this political moment as an opportunity to talk about the need for access to Medicare, just when millions of people — including those with coverage through work or Medicare — are preparing to face higher costs next year.

Hoping to win back the support of some working-class voters who have turned away, party leaders took the opportunity to recall cuts to health programs recently approved by Republicans.

For their part, Republicans are very secure in public that this strategy will have no effect, reminding people of the Democrats who caused the government shutdown. but, New KFF analysis It shows that 80% of all subsidies to pay insurance premiums are beneficiaries of people registered in states where Trump won.

The closure coincides with the start of open enrollment season, when insurers prepare to send out notices of next year’s rates to about 24 million people enrolled in ACA plans.

If benefits expire, the monthly cost is expected for the average beneficiary Copy. Insurers have also warned against being forced to raise premium prices too much, because many healthy people may stop paying for coverage if it becomes too expensive, leaving a pool of more sick people with fewer resources to cover them.

“In the next few days, more than 20 million Americans will see drastic increases in their premiums, Copays and deductibles as Republicans refuse to extend Affordable Care Act benefits at a reduced rate,” House Democratic Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries said Thursday, October 2 on Steyr Forces.

In most states, open enrollment begins on November 1st. Some insurers and government marketplaces have delayed shipping notices with rates next year because they are waiting to see what happens in Washington. For example, Covered California, the state insurance marketplace, plans to send notices to more than 1 million people who signed up later than usual this year, for October 15.

From his home in Richmond, Virginia, Natalie Terre, 31, anxiously awaits the arrival of his warning. Check your state marketplace’s website to see if they have already posted the new rates for their plan.

Tyer relied on covering the market for over a year, while working part-time at a small local video production company and studying for a master’s degree to become a school counselor. Subsidies cover $255 of their monthly cousin, reducing your payment to $53. As it is generally healthy, if the credits run out and its cousin increases significantly, he will likely give up coverage.

“He’ll probably run out of medical insurance and rely on hope,” Teer said.

However, Democrats’ effort to focus the government shutdown debate on the issue of health costs clashes with several other uncomfortable realities of the shutdown: millions of federal employees without collecting their paychecks, the interruption of some public health agency functions and the risk of suspension of nutritional payments for low-income mothers, among other implications.

The ACA has been a point of political tension since 2010, when Republicans opposed approval of this landmark health law. Soon after, the party won several legislative elections, leading to another government shutdown in 2013, when they tried to eliminate the program. In 2017, Republican leaders tried to repeal the law again, as part of Trump’s campaign promise.

The current conflict — about billions of dollars in subsidies touted by Democrats during the Covid pandemic to increase engravings in the ACA — has been dormant for months.

The same Democrats who drafted the legislation that introduced and then expanded these benefits, the enhanced benefits are set to expire at the end of this year. Even some Republicans warned this summer that letting them expire could be harmful. Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward published a memo where they warned that extending appropriations could make a difference in next year’s legislative elections.

Expanding charges from the ACA, which lowered monthly premiums to just $0 or $10 for low-income people and limited spending for average earners to just 8.5% of their paychecks, is a popular measure among many Americans.

More than three-quarters of Americans want these benefits to continue, according to a new KFF survey before the shutdown. Nearly 3 in 4 people said they would blame Trump or the GOP if they were repealed.

Although they have so far this year declined to address the issue, GOP leaders have indicated they are willing to extend them, but with new restrictions on who qualifies for them. They have also said they want to discuss policy details for several weeks, rather than under the pressure of a lockdown.

On October 6, House Speaker Mike Johnson accused Democrats of inventing a political problem for the government shutdown and urged them to agree to a continuity solution only to “preserve medical attention.”

“They decided to take up a dispute over Medicare,” Johnson said, adding that he believed the benefits were a “December 31 issue,” referring to the expected expiration date.

Since open enrollment begins next month, insurance companies should start publishing premium rates so customers can compare prices in the next few days. Democrats argued that waiting months to reach an agreement, which could change those rates, could generate public confusion.

While more and more Americans seem to blame Trump and Republicans for the government shutdown, only a quarter of the population is convinced that the Democratic proposal to extend ACA benefits justifies a government shutdown. CBS News Scan It was held on the weekend of October 4th.

William Pierce, a health consultant who worked during the presidency of George W. Bush, said Medicare is usually a winning message for Democrats, who have had difficulty joining issues that appeal to the working class in recent years.

“Everything revolves around Medicare. They need all of this to revolve around Medicare,” Pierce said, calling it a weakness for Republicans. “They need to keep talking about it.”

Republicans in the White House and Congress Contrary to statementsBased on questionable facts, Democrats seek to expand free medical care to immigrants without legal status in the country.

In fact, these immigrants cannot enroll in the medical insurance marketplace, and Democrats did not propose opening up ACA coverage in their proposal.

Back in Richmond, while Tier is interested in his coverage of the coming year, he is also concerned to see that the debate is focused on immigrants. Some of his teammates and colleagues are also concerned.

“And the reality is that what happens with these subsidies is that the general public — who want to work in the public sector, who want to educate their children — we will lose medical interest,” Tyer said.

KFF Health News reporter Bernard J. Wolfson contributed to this report.