As detailed on today’s BradCast, the cost of healthcare for tens of millions of Americans is likely to skyrocket as of January 1. It is likely to be far worse than you’ve heard. Congressional Dems are fighting to prevent it. Republicans, including the President, seem to be just fine with it. Those are basically the terms as we barrel toward a likely federal government shutdown next week. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
We dig into the details, stakes, and positions of the two sides on that shutdown deadline (October 1) and the new costs for health care set to explode after December 31 with our guest today who knows a whole lot about all of the above. But first, a bit of news…
- Jimmy Kimmel returned to our public airwaves on Tuesday night, after a week-long suspension following threats by Donald Trump and his FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, to revoke broadcast licenses from ABC affiliate stations if they didn’t nix Kimmel. In the wake of public outrage (and cancelled streaming service subscriptions), Disney, which owns ABC, buckled and invited Kimmel back on air. To the hilarious despair of Trump, Kimmel received enormous ratings last night, and delivered a heartfelt, emotional, blistering, funny, courageous and important monologue. We play an extended portion of it today, given that tens of millions of Americans in dozens of major markets were not allowed to see it thanks to the Sinclair and Nexstar corporations, the nation’s two largest local TV station conglomerates, which are refusing to reinstate the program.
- Democrats continued their winning streak in Special Elections on Tuesday by, once again, outperforming themselves by enormous margins as compared to last November. In Georgia, for example, in a special election for the State Senate in a very Republican district, while the Democratic candidate lost, she picked up about 18 points for Dems in that district as compared to last November. In Arizona, Adelita Grijalva easily defeated her Republican opponent in a special election to fill the U.S. House seat left vacant by the death of her 12-term progressive Democratic father, Rep. Raul Grijalva. But where Raul won reelection by 26 points last November, his daughter, on Tuesday, won by nearly 39 points. That’s a 13-point swing for Dems. If you compare her Tuesday victory to the Presidential results in that same District last year, Dems improved by 16 points. Adelita has also vowed to sign the Congressional discharge petition to force a vote in the U.S. House on releasing the Epstein Files. Her signature is the last one needed to achieve a majority of House members signing on. That should allow the vote to finally proceed.
Little wonder then that House Speaker Mike Johnson has instructed Republicans to stay home next week, even though without a deal with Democrats to keep the Government open, it will shut down on Wednesday, the first day of the new federal fiscal year.
To that end, Democrats are desperately working to strike a deal with Republicans. But they are standing firm (so far) in demanding a permanent expansion of the enhanced premium subsidies for more than 25 million Americans who receive access to health care via the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) exchanges. Monthly premiums — and health care in general for everyone, thanks to Trump’s tariffs — are set to go through the roof at the end of the year, without an extension. This will adversely affect millions of Republican constituents across the country, as well as Democrats and independents.
But where Democrats are trying to strike a deal, Donald Trump, who had agreed to meet with Democratic leaders to negotiate this week, abruptly cancelled the meeting on Tuesday night, citing all kind of false and, frankly, batshit insane phony reasons for chickening out of his first face-to-face meeting with Democratic Leaders since retaking office this year.
There is a lot on the line in the days (and weeks ahead), which could, in addition to scrambling politics in D.C. and putting government employees out of work, result in millions of Americans losing their access to health care.
We’re joined today to break all of this down by CHARLES GABA, a longtime independent healthcare data analyst, who first began his work on this as a hobby in the early years of Obamacare. He is now regularly cited as a source by mainstream media. Most recently, Gaba has been publishing state-by-state breakdowns of how much ACA customers can expect to see their monthly premiums rise next year, if Republicans refuse to extend the enhanced premiums temporarily enacted by Democrats after Joe Biden took office in 2021.
“Basically,” he tells me, some 25 million Americans are “kind of screwed” beginning next year, unless Republicans come around to extending the subsidies. “I am one of those,” explains Gaba, whose family — including himself, his wife and his child — enjoy access to healthcare thanks to the ACA. “If they are not extended, then starting January 1st, if we are in the same policy that we are today, we’d be looking at around an $11,000 increase in our premiums next year. That’s on top of what we’re already paying.”
Gaba’s state-by-state analyses leads him to expect “90-95% increases on average” for monthly premiums next year without a renewal of federal subsidies. He underscores that that is an “average”, and that while some might see less, “there are also going to be other households that are going to see their net premiums increase 200%, 300%. In theory they could be looking at going five or six times what they are paying now, which of course, nobody could possibly afford. A lot of people at the more extreme ends are going to have to drop their coverage entirely.”
While Republicans have teased the idea of extending subsidies temporarily, for another year, Gaba, one of the first to warn about this potential healthcare-pocalypse, tells me today why he is rallying Democrats to allow the Government to shut down, if necessary, unless Republicans agree to expand the ACA subsidies permanently, roll back their recent massive cuts to Medicaid and include provisions in any budget agreement that would prevent Trump from simply rescinding any of the spending agreed to by Congress.
And, oh yes, all of this is likely causing huge problems health care company actuaries trying to set pricing for the Open Enrollment period beginning November 1. “I’m sure they are going through Pepto-Bismol and Tums by the bottle-full right now. The insurance companies, they actually started crunching their numbers back in March. This is a multi-month process. The final contracts [with state regulators] are supposed to be signed usually sometime in mid-September.” And yet, on CNN today, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune called for a seven-week Continuing Resolution to keep the government open at current spending levels, kicking the can down the road to figure out whether ACA subsidies will be extended beyond the end of the year.
Tune in for insight on the very high stakes, potential horrors, and almost certain chaos that awaits over the next few days and weeks, even while few Americans have even noticed any of this just yet…
Emerging from “plain sight” (Hegseth abruptly summons top military commanders to a meeting in Virginia next week).