Senate Republicans are holding the line as expiring health care subsidies are causing premiums to skyrocket: reopen the government, then we’ll talk.
“We’ve talked a lot about reforms, but we haven’t gotten specific, because our position is we’re really not going to get serious about this — I mean, even though there’s a lot of ideas out there — until the government gets reopened,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said of Republicans’ position on Monday.
It’s a standoff with Democrats, as subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year. The issue became all the more pressing when open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act started over the weekend and recipients saw their premiums projected to increase by hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in 2026. Democrats have been unwilling to reopen the government without an extension of these subsidies, while Republicans insist the government must reopen before any deal on subsidies is even remotely on the table.