Excellent explainer video by Sen. Mark Warner on how “your health care costs are probably going to skyrocket next year due to the awful bill that was passed earlier and signed by President Trump.”
“Your health care costs are probably going to skyrocket next year due to the awful bill that was passed earlier and signed by President Trump. I want to tell you why this is happening and what I’m going to do to try to stop it to make sense of this. Let’s go way back in time to 2010 when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Part of that Act was to create in effect a marketplace for those individuals who didn’t work in big companies, oftentimes worked in small companies or worked by themselves and couldn’t afford healthcare coverage. And we all know healthcare coverage is critical to everybody’s life. So a marketplace was created so that you could get the same kind of advantages in terms of lower costs that you would get if you worked for a big company. But still, even with that marketplace, there needed to be additional tax subsidies put in so that if you were, you know, kind of on the edge, you get an additional subsidy so you could still afford the marketplace and you could have a choice of plans that you would buy uh at a reduced rate. And even with those subsidies, a lot of Americans still couldn’t fully afford healthcare. And we know what damage that does to a family.
So in 2021, the Congress – led by Democrats at that point – doubled the subsidies for the marketplace and it really worked. It meant instead of 12 million Americans buying through the marketplace, that number went up to 24 million. And in many ways, having more people covered either through the marketplace or actually even through Medicaid meant that there were [fewer] people going to the emergency room. That brought overall health care costs down, even if you have traditional private health insurance or if you get your health insurance through your employer.
And to give an example of what this meant in real dollars: before the expansion, only about 36% of eligible folks could actually find a health insurance plan for 10 bucks a month. After the expansion, 80% of the eligible folks could find that plan at $10 a month. So clearly a lot of folks were suddenly got improved healthcare. So now, about 24 million Americans get their health insurance through the marketplace. Nine out of 10 of those 24 million receive part of these expanded credits.
So you think that’s good. You’d think that’s great. We’ve made progress. Wrong. You know, when we the Democrats were in power, we got all this through, actually without much Republican help. Now, with a new administration, they want to eliminate virtually all of these subsidies – that will mean up to a 75% increase in your healthcare premiums. That will be devastating. Millions of Americans will lose health insurance. And remember, by forcing all these folks into the emergency room, that means people who get private health insurance or employer-based health insurance, your costs are going to go up, too.
So, what does this mean in terms of real families? If you’re a low-income family making, say, less than $32,000 a year, your health care costs now range roughly around 50 bucks a month. Without the subsidies, it’ll go up to almost $800 a month. Folks can’t afford that. But if you’re a middle class family, say you make roughly $80,000 a year in Virginia Beach, you’ll have your monthly premiums go up $900 a month. Even if you’re middle class making 80 grand, I don’t know many families could afford a $900 a month increase in their health care costs; it’s going to put people out of range of getting affordable healthcare.
So again, at the national basis, with these increased costs, again, this starts next year, we’ll see about 4 million Americans immediately lose their healthcare. That number will probably go up to six or seven million people by the 2030s because people just won’t be able to afford it.
Now, some of you be saying, ‘Well, you know, look, luckily I don’t get my healthcare through Medicaid or I don’t get it through the marketplace, so I’m going to be fine.’ No, you’re not going to be fine. As millions of these people that are currently covered don’t receive healthcare, they’re not going to disappear. They’re still going to get sick. They’re going to show up at the emergency room. They’re going to overwhelm the emergency room. They’re going to drive up hospital costs across the country. Those of us with private health insurance, our rates will go up as well. You just can’t overwhelm the system and not have those costs get passed through to private health insurers. You know, company-run health insurance plans. We’re all going to bear this price increase.
You know, I’ve seen a lot of stupid policy enacted under this president, but maybe the stupidest will be if these tax subsidies for health care for the marketplace expire at the end of the year. Already insurance companies are sending out increased rates. They’ll hit mailboxes in Virginia in October and all across the country in the coming months.
So, I’m going to fight with every tool I can to make sure these tax credits are continued. Let’s not wreck health care further for Americans all over the country. We will use whatever tool we can. This will be part of the fight on whether we continue to fund the government. Some of the Republicans have realized, hey, they’ve made a mistake. They got to meet us halfway and not put more Americans through this unnecessary pain. They’ve already done enough damage on Medicaid. To let these health care tax subsidies expire will literally wreak havoc across their whole health care system. We can do better. We must do better. Basic health care in America is critically important not only to family security, but frankly to our economy. We’ve got to hold the line on making sure these tax subsidies don’t expire. I’m going to do whatever it takes to win this fight. Your healthcare is worth fighting for.”
