Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, said that Democrats are essentially shutting down the government over “Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy.”
Breitbart News has explained on the Breitbart Fight Club how Democrats shut down the government over the looming expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, subsidies.
These subsidies were first enhanced through the Biden-era $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus plan, formally known as the American Rescue Plan. Democrats continued these subsidies through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.
The enhanced subsidies will expire on December 31, 2025.
Democrats have contended that the loss of enhanced subsidies will result in the widespread loss of Americans’ health care; however, experts have explained that these enhanced subsidies are not for the truly needy.
Cannon said, “What the enhanced subsidies do is they subsidize people making from $129,000 all the way up to $600,000 per year. And so these are really the Obamacare subsidies for the wealthy.”
Cannon remarked, “The part that offends people is that Obamacare is still so unaffordable that people earning $129,000, $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 a year still can’t afford it — and that’s why the government is subsidizing them.”
“The most important kind of assistance we can provide to people who are having a hard time affording health insurance is to get all the Obamacare regulations out of the way. Because if you do that, then premiums will plummet by 50 to 60 percent for most people in the Exchanges,” he continued.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) found that the Democrat counterproposal to the Republican stopgap spending bill, which would permanently extend these Obamacare subsidies, would add $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement:
If lawmakers want to extend any of the ACA subsidies, they should do so responsibly by targeting the extension and at least offsetting the costs. Ideally we should be offsetting new borrowing twice over. Plenty of options are available, from adopting site-neutral payments to reducing Medicare Advantage upcoding to funding Cost Sharing Reduction payments.
Meanwhile, if lawmakers want to pare back parts of the reconciliation law, they should focus on the $6 trillion in tax cuts and spending increases, not the payfors.
“Meanwhile, we should be able to keep the government’s lights on without making our devastating fiscal situation even worse,” MacGuineas added.
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