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For fifteen years Washington has been running a shell game on hardworking Americans, pretending to fix health care while quietly shifting costs and propping up broken markets. The Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits were expanded during the pandemic and then extended by elites in later bills, a policy carousel that has soaked taxpayers and papered over the real problem: runaway prices and crony deals.
Don’t let the preachy op-eds fool you — when the New York Times and other establishment voices say the subsidies are “working,” they mean they are keeping an unhappy status quo from collapsing, not that they’re delivering honest, affordable care to Main Street families. Those temporary relief measures were never a solution; they were a bailout by another name, papered over by the same crowd that told you lower premiums were just around the corner.
Now that those enhanced subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year, the political theater has exploded into a full-blown shutdown fight in Washington, with Democrats demanding permanent bailouts and Republicans — at least some of them — pushing back against more taxpayer handouts. The Senate’s recent maneuvering to move a short-term funding bill shows how central the subsidy fight has become to reopening the government and whose pockets Washington really answers to.
Here’s the practical effect for families: analyses show premiums and out-of-pocket costs could spike dramatically if the enhanced credits vanish, exposing the truth about who’s been cushioned by the system and who’s been left holding the bill. That’s not charity — it’s a transfer of income from the working middle class into a complex subsidy system that mostly propels higher sticker prices and steady windfalls for entrenched interests.
Humanitarian-sounding groups may roll out sob stories of people who would be hurt by the cliff, and of course there are Americans who will be squeezed — that’s a tragedy we should care about. But feeling bad doesn’t excuse letting Washington bake permanent, poorly targeted subsidies into law while refusing to tackle the root causes: regulatory capture, lack of price transparency, and an insurance market that rewards gaming, not value.
This is a moment for conservatives to be loud, proud, and practical: demand real fixes instead of more papering-over. Push for competitive insurance markets across state lines, expand Health Savings Accounts and direct-care options, hold insurers and hospitals accountable for price and quality, and stop letting Congress use temporary tax credits as a backdoor way to grow dependency and corporate profits.
Don’t be bullied by the elites who lecture about compassion while protecting their friends in high places. Stand with policies that restore choice, slash red tape, and put purchasing power back in the hands of American families — because liberty and responsibility, not Washington bailouts, are what rebuild prosperity for everyone.
