As the Schumer Shutdown enters its sixth day, the fight over healthcare continues.
Democrats want to give illegal immigrants healthcare, and Republicans, rightly, do not. Democrats have admitted as much, too. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said, "Democrats are demanding healthcare for everybody. We want to save lives. We want to make sure healthcare is available to those who would die."
Shri Thander (D-MI), said of illegal immigrant subsidies, "If that means we gotta shut this government down, so be it" and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) admitted, "The amount of money that actually is going towards people who are undocumented is such a small portion" that Americans should be fine with forking over their tax dollars.
It's important to draw a distinction between health insurance and health care. Both are expensive, but Democrats play semantic games that equate having health insurance to having access to health care; they are not the same. The problem here is that Democrats, thanks to the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare), have made health insurance far worse and incredibly expensive.
People have known this for almost two decades, after they saw their good, affordable insurance plans outlawed and replaced by expensive plans with fewer benefits. Democrats forced Obamacare down our throats without Republican votes, but they've spent the last 15 years blaming Republicans for a mess they created.
Now the Democrats want to make Obamacare "affordable" by offsetting those expensive insurance plans with more government subsidies.
Yet Democrats have demanded that Republicans agree to extend the covid-era insurance subsidies without proposing any way to pay for it. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this will cost $350 billion over the next decade. These temporary benefits were included in the American Rescue Plan of March 2021 and extended the next year in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act until the end of 2025.
The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable. President Barack Obama’s signature achievement allowed people to buy insurance on marketplaces with subsidies based on their income. The architects of the program assumed that risk pools would be bigger than they turned out to be. As a result, policies cost more than expected.
Incredible to see them admit this now.
Truly.
The Democratic Party’s biggest policy achievement of this century is the 2010 passage of Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. Establishing a national healthcare system had been a Democratic goal for generations. With Obamacare, the party got closer than ever before, as it briefly had 60 votes in the Senate.
But Democrats did not have the political support to establish the huge, single-payer system they wanted, so they settled for the Affordable Care Act — establishing marketplaces, offering government subsidies, establishing rules regarding pre-existing conditions, expanding Medicaid, and more. It was the best they could do with the votes that they had. Acknowledging that, some Democrats at the time referred to Obamacare as a “starter home,” an affordable beginning house to which an owner adds rooms and amenities as the years go by.
Of course, to do that, the Democratic Party would need to control the White House, House, and Senate. After 2010, the next time that happened for Democrats was in 2021, in the first year of President Joe Biden’s term. So it was no surprise that a top Democratic priority was expanding Obamacare.
It's a tale as old as time. The government, usually run by Democrats, tries to make something more "affordable" by having the government subsidize it. And, without fail, that "affordable" thing becomes insanely expensive. Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed since Obamacare made them "affordable."
Americans now spend more on healthcare than on groceries and housing. Last December, CBS News reported that the average cost of a family's health insurance had increased from $5,791 in 2000 to nearly $25,572 in 2024. Coverage for a single person quadrupled over that same time period ($2,196 in 2000 to $8,951 in 2024).
The influx of illegal immigrants doesn't help things. Between 2020 and 2024, the cost of healthcare for illegal immigrants increased by 196%.
It's also put a significant strain on healthcare, as many illegals use hospital emergency rooms as primary care clinics. According to PubMed, 61% of emergency room visits were classifiable as "preventable or "primary care treatable."
According to that NYC nurse, "[Illegal immigrants] give fictitious addresses so they never get a bill, but even if they do, they don’t pay it. The minute they get citizenship they immediately go on Medicaid which pays for EVERYTHING! Meanwhile I have patients that have to CHOOSE what medications they can afford to pay for each month even though they have private health insurance. America is a generous country. But this is unfair."
This is what the Schumer Shutdown is all about: restoring sanity to our healthcare system, and stopping wasteful spending that doesn't put Americans first.