Obamacare premiums are set to spike for tens of millions of Americans next month. Plenty of rank-and-file Republicans are happy to sit back and ride it out.
Some vulnerable GOP lawmakers up for reelection are scrambling for a last-minute fix to renew the enhanced federal health care subsidies keeping costs down. But even if party leaders and Donald Trump were to rally around a plan in the coming days — and there’s no sign of that happening — many conservatives are likely to revolt.
Democrats have vowed to hammer the GOP in the midterms if they allow the federal aid to expire, but many on the right expect the political fallout to be minimal, or even to backfire on Democrats. For other conservatives, any blowback will be worth it if it means they get to rein in a system the party has fundamentally opposed since its launch more than a decade ago.
Republicans are always looking for small populations to fuck over. There’s only ~25M people on ACA, or about 7% of the population. The rules are complicated and mostly hidden behind automatic calculations done by marketplace websites, so most people’s experience is just that the website gives them a price list and they choose one to pay. Can’t tell if price hikes are due to actual insurance company rate hikes, changes in the tax credit structure, or their own increased income.
For politicians, it’s a pretty safe bet that the size of the affected population and obscurity of the cost structure will prevent any serious organized blowback. Insurance companies are going to be scapegoats for this.
You’d think it was like half the country given the media coverage, but nope, 25 million. Redistrict ‘em. Everyone else’s insurance goes up anyways because capitalism is the ultimate hellscape.