Margot Sanger-Katz

We are right in the middle of this debate.

I think what you can see with this discharge petition is that there are some Republicans who are really worried about this issue politically.

But you can also see that there are other Republicans who really just don't like Obamacare and don't want to be pouring more money into it.

And they're kind of having this fight within their own party.

They control the government, and the Democrats cannot get this policy done by themselves.

And so I think we're just going to have to watch over the next few weeks to see if there's some kind of compromise.

But even if one of these bills comes together in the next few weeks or months, it's still going to be kind of complicated because a lot of people have already picked their plans for the year and they wouldn't have chosen their insurance knowing that these subsidies are coming back.

But I think the most likely scenario is we're kind of just snapping back to this pre-pandemic policy where people do have help buying their insurance, but not nearly as much as they've had in these last few years.

A lot of these people who have benefited from these enhanced subsidies actually don't live in the places that Democrats govern.

They live in states that are controlled by Republicans and that voted for Trump in the last election.

So the biggest increases of enrollment in Obamacare have been in southern states.

Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia.

These are real Republican states, and those voters may have something to say if they blame their Republican lawmaker for losing this really important financial assistance that they were getting, and they might vote them out of office.

But I do think it's important to note this is a relatively small share of the public.

We are only talking about 24 million people who are in this market.

And in overall polling, very few Americans are currently ranking health care as one of their number one issues going into the next election.

So I think the question is, does the subsidy issue start to function more like a metaphor where it's reminding Americans of their frustrations with the high cost of the health care system outside of this small market?

Because health care is getting more expensive for everyone.

Right.

Sure.