Do Republicans have a health care plan?

The government shutdown is about health care. Democrats say they want to extend tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act's insurance plans or else premiums will spike. Republicans are refusing, saying they want to replace Obamacare with something better. The details are elusive, though, and so is an end to the shutdown.

GOP leaders “don’t appear to have an alternate plan for what happens next,” said The Hill. When the shutdown ends, “we wil be open to have good conversations, productive conversations” about the future of health care, said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). He did not offer details. There are a “lot of options there,” he said.

Such vagueness has “increasingly emboldened” Democrats as the shutdown drags on, said The Hill. Democrats are vowing not to “back off their health care funding demands” as a condition of ending the shutdown. Republicans will not "even entertain the idea of an extension in the context of ending the shutdown.” So the stalemate continues.

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What did the commentators say?

“Millions of consumers” have received notice that their health insurance premiums are “expected to spike next year,” said The Washington Post. Republicans are worried that Democrats’ demands to renew Obamacare subsidies are “proving salient with voters — including their own.” That is because GOP voters will be “disproportionately hurt” by rising costs: Residents of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina are all “more dependent on tax subsidies” to obtain health insurance.

Democrats have the upper hand in the shutdown fight “because Republican voters like Obamacare,” Chris Brennan said at USA Today. Researchers say that three-quarters of the 24 million Americans enrolled in the program live in states won by President Donald Trump in 2024. That is why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is now warning that “insurance premiums for her adult children will double” if the subsidies are not extended into next year. But Trump does not “sound like a man with a plan,” said Brennan, perhaps because he is a “billionaire who doesn’t have to worry about the cost of his health insurance.” The question is whether GOP leaders will “keep marching along to Trump’s disastrous orders.”

A Republican deal to extend the subsidies “would be a stunning move for a party that spent years campaigning on repealing" the ACA, Audrey Fahlberg said at the National Review. Republicans do not even have to take action now — they can “simply let the credits expire.” But “political pressure” ahead of next year’s midterm elections “may just be too much for Trump and moderate Republicans to bear.” For now, there is a “huge chunk of GOP lawmakers and policy experts” ready to let the health subsidies end.

What next?

There are several possibilities for compromise, said Politico. Congress could extend the subsidies, but with new income limits for eligibility. Or they could “grandfather” current enrollees into the program while cutting off subsidies for new enrollees. Whatever the solution, it has to be “something not only Democrats can accept but also Republicans.”