Anger over the high cost of living is eating away at President Donald Trump’s approval ratings. And now, new data indicates millions of Americans are getting kicked off their health insurance plans thanks to the GOP’s war on the working class — and their struggles to keep up with their bills is taking on life-or-death stakes.
Democrats warned last year that if Republicans let Affordable Care Act subsidies expire, several million people would lose their insurance because without those subsidies, healthcare premiums would become far too expensive. Those subsidies were enacted in early 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, and they led to significant enrollment increases in ACA marketplaces. But Republicans refused to extend those subsidies last year, and despite making a bunch of noise about finding some conservative-style solution to replace it, they eventually settled on the “fix” of doing nothing.
The false populism of the right is likely to bear political costs.
Now, the dire consequences of the GOP’s heartlessness are playing out. NOTUS, citing internal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services documents that it obtained, found, “More than one in five people who enrolled in health insurance through HealthCare.gov during open enrollment and in the weeks immediately following were dropped from coverage for failing to pay their first month’s premium.” That number is nearly double the 12% drop-off of enrollees last year during a similar time frame last year, NOTUS reported.
Additionally, there have been fewer sign-ups for ACA plans in the first place, which may be due to anticipation of unaffordable premiums. According to the documents, total ACA enrollment is now “around 19 million people, around 3 million fewer than one year ago.”
A CMS spokesperson told NOTUS that ACA fraud “skyrocketed under the Biden administration,” describing the enrollment surge as “largely the result of people being enrolled onto ACA plans without their consent or enrolling into subsidized ACA plans that they did not qualify for based on income.”
But the Trump administration has not presented evidence of the elimination of mass fraud that would account for such a big drop-off. What we do know is that the Trump administration loves making unsubstantiated or plainly made-up claims of fraud to advance its political agenda.
It’s difficult to call the Republicans’ decision to let the subsidies lapse a policy misstep because it was a deliberate decision, and its unfolding consequences were predicted in advance. Coupled with the GOP’s legislation passing tax cuts for the rich, the agenda is clear: an upward redistribution of wealth.
But the false populism of the right is likely to bear political costs. The exorbitant cost of healthcare in the United States is one of the most commonly cited causes of a high cost of living. Historically, attacks on healthcare have motivated protest votes, too. The GOP took a huge hit in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term because Democrats were able to capitalize on the GOP’s attempts to dismantle the ACA.
In a conversation with a reporter on Tuesday, Trump admitted that when navigating his war with Iran, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.” The same indifference to the lives of ordinary Americans extends to his thinking about our health insurance system. Common sense suggests that it is in need of radical progressive reform. But Trump, a corrupt billionaire fixated on renovating the White House and deregulating the economy, clearly is not thinking about the Americans who have reluctantly stopped paying for healthcare insurance in their attempt to make ends meet.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.