Democrats are winning the health care shutdown war

From the moment Donald Trump hit the campaign trail in 2015, he promised the American people he would replace Obamacare with a plan that would offer “such great health care, at a tiny fraction of the cost — and it’s going to be so easy.“ He said, “nobody knows health care better than Donald Trump.“ Ten years of similar promises have shown that replacing the Affordable Care Act wasn’t so easy after all — and that the only health care plan the GOP ever truly wanted was one called “you’re on your own.”

Obamacare is, overall, a successful and popular program — the Republicans’ worst nightmare. So naturally, drunk with power as they are, they’ve decided to take another stab at ruining it, which is why they decided to let the subsidies that have been in place for the last five years lapse. Experts say this will cause premiums to skyrocket and force many to go without health care. Restoring these subsidies is Democrats’ main demand in the government shutdown battle

People across the country are just beginning to receive notices in the mail showing their premiums will double, or worse, next year. Republicans knew this was coming, but they either thought they could escape blame for it or they are so deluded they actually believe it’s what people want. As the shutdown moves into its second week, the consequences of their actions are starting to manifest.

We know this because Trump is once again parroting his old lines, telling NBC, “Obamacare has been a disaster for the people, so we want to have it fixed so it works.” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wailed to the media, “Let me look right into the camera and tell you clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about health care. Republicans are the party working around the clock to fix health care. We’re not — this is not talking points for us: We’ve done it.” He explained that the GOP has “lots of ideas” but they aren’t going to talk about them now because that’s for “the next three months,” presumably while they hash out the One Big Beautiful Budget. 

If the party has any plans beyond raising premiums for Obamacare and slashing Medicaid to the bone, closing tons of rural hospitals, instituting irrational work requirements and denying care to millions of people, the place to look for some of their big ideas is Project 2025. Despite the fact that Trump denied he had anything to do with it, the Heritage Foundation manifesto has turned out to be the blueprint for his administration’s domestic policies. According to the Project 2025 Tracker, which bills itself as “a comprehensive, community-driven initiative to track the implementation” of the plan, the project is 48% complete. 

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But as nefariously creative as Project 2025 was, at least in the area of health care policy it is nothing more than the same warmed over calls for privatization and deregulation, both of which will make Americans’ lives worse. 

The authors propose to force all Medicare patients into private Medicare Advantage plans by making it the default option, laying the groundwork to fully privatize Medicare. They want to remove consumer protections from all the private insurance plans that aren’t in the ACA marketplace. Those regulations are an underappreciated aspect of Obamacare, requiring all insurance companies to actually cover health care and not discriminate. They plan to open up the market to sell junk insurance plans which are worth virtually nothing. 

Those are the proposals for which Johnson has vowed the GOP is working day and night. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Joe Perticone of the Bulwark that he didn’t think Republicans would move on the plans until after the 2026 midterms — a year from now — because Democrats need to be beaten s0 badly that they’ll “come to their senses” and agree to the half-baked measures. 

But the GOP’s lack of strategy and success makes it clear the party is as flummoxed on this issue as they’ve always been, and they know it’s a loser for them. Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has broken with the party to demand the Obamacare subsidies be extended. And when you’ve lost Marge, well…

Democrats have historically been in the driver’s seat when it comes to health care. Perennial polling shows them to be more trusted than Republicans on the issue, and for good reason. Democrats are responsible for the very existence of Medicare and Medicaid, and they have safeguarded the programs for decades of Republican attempts to take away people’s health insurance. According to polling on which party bears responsibility for the shutdown, most people see that the inane talking point that Democrats were demanding free health insurance for undocumented immigrants is an obvious lie, so much so that Republicans are dropping it. Word about Medicaid and the ACA premiums is starting to filter into the mainstream. For the first time in recent memory, headlines are proclaiming that “Republicans are in disarray” rather than Democrats.

This battle over health care is disorienting. It appears to be playing out like partisan skirmishes of the distant past — before a president was wrecking the federal government, treating the Department of Justice like his personal weapon of vengeance and sending masked agents into the streets to abduct and assault people. Even contemplating the fight in these terms risks normalizing all the corruption and abuse that’s taking place throughout our society at the hands of this administration. But it really isn’t. 

Because this health care battle isn’t just about health insurance, which was the field on which the politics surrounding the issue have historically played out. Americans had faith that their actual health care, if they could afford it, would be good, and that while it had its flaws, the United States had a modern health system, comprehensive public health and world-class medical research. With the government’s shambolic response during the first year of the pandemic and the damage being done every day by the administration to our scientific research community, I suspect a lot of people are feeling insecure about their actual health care these days. 

Let’s call it the RFK Jr. effect. With everything from cancer research being cancelled, to measles outbreaks and the president shouting from the podium in the White House “don’t take Tylenol!,” it’s very hard to have any confidence that this country has a functional health care system at all. 

All of this has to be weighing on people’s minds as they assess the reasons for this government shutdown — even if they aren’t putting it all together quite that way. Health care policy in 2025 isn’t just a parochial “kitchen table issue.” It’s now on the front lines of this massive war against our social safety net. Because it’s an issue that people can immediately see and feel the effects of on their daily lives, Republicans have not yet found an effective way of answering the charges against them when it comes to damaging Obamacare and allowing premiums to soar.

If Democrats can find the fortitude to hold out for their demands, they will have taken the first step in reining in this lawless administration and given the American people something to hold onto in these dark days.