What’s At Stake With The Government Shutdown

The current government shutdown as you may be aware is being held up over Democratic demands to extend the Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies and restore the cuts made to Medicare/Medicaid. Democrats have chosen to take a stand on these issues now rather try to extend the subsidies and restore the Medicare/Medicaid cuts prior to the new calendar year.

The Enhanced ACA subsidies were first made available as part of the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 and were extended through the end of 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act. These enhanced subsidies will expire at the end of this year unless Congress further extends them and President Trump signs it into law.

A significant number of families will be directly impacted if these subsidies go away. And its not just younger families that will be affected – retirees are also using ACA Marketplace insurance coverage and may face these increases as well. Open enrollment begins November 1st and notices are already being mailed out indicating a “modest” increase for next year. If the subsidies expire, premiums could increase on average by 136% instead.

This article gets into a little more detail about the impact on the ACA expanded subsidies and includes an interactive chart where you can see what is projected to happen to ACA premiums in your state.

The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) cuts over $1 trillion from health programs – the largest rollback of federal support for health care in American history. The legislation also slashes at least $120 billion from SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps), reducing food assistance for low-income families. The health care cuts will be implemented over several years and target both Medicare and Medicaid programs. These cuts will result in an estimated 10 million people losing their health insurance coverage.

An article outlining the health program cuts can be found here.

We encourage you to reach out to your congressman/senator and let them know that this needs to be fixed now.