Forget Obamacare subsidies — it’s time to mend or END the whole thing

The New York Post ^ | 11 October 2025 | Editorial Board

[WhiteHatBobby0701]

Democrats shut down the government partly to force Republicans to extend COVID-era boosts in Obamacare subsidies that Dems once called “temporary” but now say are needed to keep the program viable.

This reveals what a true disaster Obamacare has been, as its critics warned even as Dems were ramming it into law with not a single Republican vote in 2010.

Blindly tossing fresh trillions down that hole is nuts: Time to fix it — or scrap it altogether.

The 10-year cost of Dems’ current demand totals almost a half-trillion dollars, to benefit primarily insurers and wealthier Americans.

Under the expiration that Democrats wrote into law, 1.6 million Americans (just 0.5% of the population) would see their subsidies return to pre-COVID levels.

That would leave their Obamacare plans so pricey that many would drop them altogether, especially those who could get cheaper and better coverage through their employers.

That exodus would push up premiums for those left in the program — precisely what Dems fear most.

Yet this goes to a fundamental problem with Obamacare (a k a, the Affordable Care Act): It was supposed to reduce costs; instead, premiums have soared nearly 80% since 2014.

So the answer isn’t to paper over the problem by boosting the national debt to keep hiking subsidies.

Congress needs to come up with a better, fairer, cheaper and more workable system.

Fact is, Obamacare was a calamity from the start: It raised taxes, destroyed the old (imperfect, but functional) private insurance market and slapped all kinds of requirements on insurers, spiking costs.

What’s left is an extremely pricey, Rube Goldberg system that provides, as health-policy expert Michael F. Cannon puts it, “junk coverage.”

[Brian Griffin]

Another possibility is to end SNAP and continue the COVID PPACA subsidies but with a $20/month minimum, $18/month if paid by automated means.

I’m stocking up on 50 cent cans of Walmart green beans and corn.

[Brian Griffin]

Drug coverage should be separated out. That way hospital systems can be complete providers of care and could cut insurance companies out of the care paying picture.

Hospitals should generally be broken into two so they no longer are local monopolies.

If a hospital is too small to be broken into two, it should be converted into a real estate entity renting out space to licensed individuals and partnerships of licensed persons.