Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The looming expiration of ACA subsidies could affect the 2026 midterm.
Robert King and Kelly Hooper at Politico:
State insurance officials are warning that the longer Congress waits to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which help low- and middle-income people afford premiums, the more difficult it will be to update rates before consumers start shopping for 2026 coverage on Nov. 1.
As a result, they said, some enrollees — particularly young and healthy people — could be frightened off by the higher rates and drop coverage, even if the rates can be adjusted later. This would further undermine Obamacare by worsening the risk pool, driving up ACA costs even more.
The dire warnings come as no deal on the subsidies is in sight, stretching the government shutdown into a third week.
“The ship has sailed,” said Ingrid Ulrey, CEO of the Washington State Health Benefit Exchange. “Congress missed the opportunity to make this decision early enough for us to reset our markets for open enrollment, and to make it clean and easy for people to come in and see premiums that include the savings from the enhanced level of premium tax credits.”
Consumers are likely to see, on average, double-digit premium increases in 2026 plan offerings, according to an analysis from health policy research firm KFF. The hikes reflect rates insurers have filed under the assumption that the subsidies will expire at the end of the year and other factors such as increasing health costs.
Benjamin Guggenheim, Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill at Politico:
The ongoing debate over soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies has reopened an old wound for Republicans: What should they do about the health care law they have railed against for more than a decade but has now taken root with their own constituents?
While some GOP hard-liners are again embracing repeal-and-replace rhetoric, the scars from the party’s failed attempt to undo the ACA in 2017 have left a broader swath of Republicans extremely wary of trying to rip out the law — even as they continue to criticize it.
...
But Democrats are already seizing on the repeal talk in some corners of the GOP, with Sen. Patty Murray of Washington comparing it to the cataclysmic sinking of the Titanic.
“It is bad enough so many of them can see the iceberg coming and are saying, ‘Ah, we’ll worry about that after the ship goes down.’ But we’ve also got Republicans saying that you wish this ship had sunk earlier,” Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told reporters. She was referring to the GOP’s refusal to extend the Obamacare subsidies before Nov. 1, at which point notices will go out alerting enrollees to massive premium hikes.
