MAGA Republicans may have ended the shutdown standoff by luring eight feckless Senate Democrats to reopen the government without addressing the MAGA-induced healthcare crisis, but Republicans are still well on their way to losing the healthcare issue, and in turn setting themselves up for a sweeping defeat in the midterms. With healthcare affordability front and center in last month’s elections, Republicans got trounced. The latest reason for GOP panic? Democrat Aftyn Behn came within single digits in the TN-7, a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points just one year ago.
You already can hear the central pitch for Democrats in 2026. “Republicans have not put forth a single credible proposal to address the affordability crisis. Instead, life in America is more expensive,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a Dear Colleague letter to his fellow House Democrats this week. “The reckless Trump tariffs have increased costs on hardworking American taxpayers by thousands of dollars per year.” He pointed out that, in contrast to Republicans, Democrats “have introduced a discharge petition that will trigger an up-or-down vote on a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.” With the paper thin Republican majority, Democrats only need a few defections to get the measure to the floor.
Meanwhile in the Senate, the promised floor vote on extension of the Affordable Care Act credits is scheduled for next week. While Democrats will ready their own extension plan, Republicans have a whole lot of nothing. “Senate Majority Leader John Thune and two other people familiar with internal conference discussions didn’t rule out a vote on a GOP health care plan next week but would not commit to that timing,” Politico reports.
We should not be surprised by the utter disarray on the Republican side. MAGA Republicans have never given up hope of repealing or at least hobbling the ACA. When the White House suggested it would roll out its own capitulation plan to extend the ACA credits, Republicans on the Hill threw a fit. That leaves Republicans facing a Democratic plan with no alternative of their own.
Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) aptly summed up the situation in a floor speech on Tuesday:
Republicans, meanwhile, are a total mess when it comes to healthcare. Republicans don’t know what to do. One day, Trump floats a so-called “healthcare plan.” The next day, Speaker Johnson forces him to shoot it down. Some Republicans say they want to dismantle the ACA, probably a majority of them in the House and a large number in the Senate want to just dismantle it altogether. Other Republicans seem to be more focused on eradicating reproductive care in every state than helping people afford healthcare. The bottom line is that Republicans are in total disarray on healthcare.
A rump group of faux moderate Senators facing the wrath of voters (e.g., Sen. Susan Collins of Maine) who lacked the wherewithal to stop the big, ugly bill (which omitted the ACA credit extension), have mumbled about a bipartisan solution but plainly lack votes to save themselves. Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans’ big idea is health spending accounts (which allow people to put money aside tax free for healthcare costs but could not possibly pay for decent coverage)—although it is more a concept of a plan than a concrete proposal. As Schumer pointed out, even Republicans admit that they are “nowhere on healthcare.”
Republicans are in a politically untenable position. KFF in November reported that “public support remains high for extending the enhanced ACA tax credits set to expire at the end of the year, with three quarters (74%) of the public in favor of extending them.” That includes 76 percent of independent voters and 50 percent of Republicans. Moreover: “When asked which party they trust to do a better job on the future of the ACA, larger share of voters say that they trust the Democratic Party (43%) than the Republican Party (32%).” That bodes poorly for Republicans in the midterms, which Democrats are intent are making a referendum on affordability in general and healthcare specifically.
A glance at some key 2026 Senate races shows just how heavily Democrats will lean into the issue of healthcare affordability. Former governor and Senate Democratic candidate in North Carolina Roy Cooper has been stressing the issue, as he did at a healthcare roundtable this fall. “Insurance companies are raising their premiums on top of federal subsidies not being renewed by Congress in this Big Beautiful Bill,” he told the audience. “And we’re going to see probably close to 900,000 people are going to find their premiums increasing hundreds of dollars a month, some of them thousands of dollars a month.”
It is much the same story in Ohio, where former senator Sherrod Brown is slamming the Republican appointed to fill J.D. Vance’s seat. “Hundreds of thousands in Ohio are going to see their premiums double or triple, all because people like Jon Husted wanted tax cuts for billionaires,” Brown said at a typical campaign stop in Columbus last month.
That message will reverberate in every Senate and House race in 2026. Democrats will be able to remind voters that they had put forth a plan to stop ACA premiums from skyrocketing and also opposed devastating Medicaid cuts. Unless political reality dawns on Republicans, they will have no cogent response. And that has all the makings of a political disaster for a party that has vowed for nearly twenty years to get rid of the ACA without a viable alternative.
I am tired of seeing the Democrats characterized as feckless and weak in reference to the shutdown. They were not. With Trump in the Oval, and a veto-proof majority impossible, they were not going to get an ACA extension out of this Congress. Meanwhile, people were going hungry due to Trump's malicious, hateful suspension of SNAP benefits. The Democrats played this perfectly: they put the ACA/health insurance issue front and center and laid it in the Republicans' laps, they put Trump in a position to characterize himself as cruel and out of touch, and they set the GOP up to take the fall when they fail to extend the subsidies. The Republicans are nowhere on healthcare because the Democrats made it so. Give them due credit.
Well seen and said, Jen! On top of affordability and healthcare chaos, there is the general lack of competence among cabinet leaders and their flunkies, which may be the scariest part of it all.