Health insurance sticker shock
Americans are seeing huge increases in their health insurance for next year as shopping season opens for Affordable Care Act plans in some states, reports KFF.
For example, a family in Virginia just found out its health plan’s deductible will jump from $800 to $20,000 next year. In Maryland, a family has learned they’ll pay $500 more a month.
The issue is, as you know, the reason the federal government has been shut down since October 1. Democrats are insisting that expiring health insurance subsidies be extended. Republican leaders say they’ll consider an extension only after Democrats vote to reopen the government.
Meanwhile, federal employees missed their first full paychecks last week. On Monday, the American Federation of Government Employees, the biggest federal employee union, urged lawmakers to reopen the government and negotiate afterward.
Republican lawmakers, mainly from battleground states, are urging their leadership and the White House to do something to ensure that the subsidies are extended.
Several prominent Republicans close to President Trump — from Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley — have been warning that failing to act will cause pain for millions of Trump voters.
“If we don’t do anything their premiums are gonna almost double. They’re too high right now. We’re talking about working people,” Hawley says. “So it’s just, we’ve got to do something. This is totally unaffordable.”
If Congress does manage to strike a deal in the coming days or weeks to extend some subsidies, the prices and types of plans available on the online marketplaces could change dramatically, bringing unprecedented uncertainty and upheaval to this year’s open enrollment, which starts in most states on Nov. 1, says KFF.
Here is an explainer that includes some of the less publicized impacts of letting the subsidies expire, from the Harvard Kennedy School.
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