Rachel Abrams

From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

This week, despite a last-ditch effort by some House Republicans to strike a deal on health care, Capitol Hill remains deadlocked on whether to extend support for millions of Americans who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act.

That's left those Americans to confront a wrenching decision.

I asked my husband, like, what should we do?

And I was like, oh my God, no way.

Keep paying for rising insurance costs or risk going without it.

Today, my colleague Margo Sanger-Katz explains who will be most affected and how this could all change the political landscape heading into the midterms.

It's Thursday, December 18th.

Margot, welcome back to The Daily.

Thank you so much.

It really feels like healthcare and debates over health insurance have been in the news like every other day almost.

And in large part, that's because there have been these really huge and ongoing and changing debates on Capitol Hill.

But it really feels like this week in particular, we have reached an inflection point, which is why we wanted to have you on the show.

The last time we had you on, it was in the thick of the shutdown fight.

And we're bringing you back here so that you can bring us up to speed on where we are now.

They agreed to reopen the government with no deal on these health care subsidies.

So this is the open enrollment that we're all quite familiar with at this point from the Affordable Care Act.

So the key word that we have been using a lot here is subsidies.

But I want to make sure that people actually understand what that means.

Specifically, what were the subsidies and how are they changing?