Margot Sanger-Katz

And I think a lot of Republican lawmakers feel like,

Even these very low-income people, if they really value their insurance, they should have to pay some minimal amount just to prove that it's something that they really want and need.

But, of course, that didn't matter at the time because the Democrats controlled the entire government.

They had the Senate, the House, and the White House.

So when 2022 rolled around, the Democrats decided to extend these more generous subsidies for even longer.

They just weren't able to make them permanent.

Right.

Because, as you may remember, Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic senator from West Virginia, insisted that they not make this a permanent policy.

Democrats chose to have the policy expire in 2025 because they were hoping that they would have enough control in the government that they would be able to eke out Democrats.

bipartisan compromise to extend the subsidies further.

But of course, that's not what happened.

Republicans swept to power in 2024.

And that's why we're now in this situation where the only way that they were able to advocate for this policy was by shutting down the government.

Basically, everyone in this market is going to be affected to some degree.

I said there were around 12 million people in the market before the extra subsidies.

Now, there are about 24 million people in the market.

Oh, wow.

This low-income group we were just talking about, that's the biggest group.

It's like half the market.

And those people are going to have to go from paying nothing for their insurance to paying somewhere around $50 a month for their insurance.