This war is dumb and illegal
28.02.2026 15:41
👍 1355
🔁 380
💬 52
📌 59
This war is dumb and illegal
On the heels of expired PTC enhancements that resulted in 1 million—and counting—fewer people enrolling in #ACA marketplace plans for 2026, CMS released a proposed rule for 2027 that would reduce marketplace enrollment by 2 million people in 2027 alone. @claireheyison.bsky.social explains:
Lawmakers in Florida (a non-expansion state) are apparently considering a Medicaid work requirements bill.
Except Florida's income eligibility thresholds are so low that forcing people to meet an 80-hour/month requirement would force them off of the program.
floridaphoenix.com/2026/02/03/m...
A federal appeals court has paused an injunction barring immigration agents from “retaliating” against peaceful protesters and observers in Minnesota.
This photo from today shows a federal agent spraying a protester on the ground with a chemical irritant.
It looks like Trump’s “buy your own insurance“ plan would largely do away with pre-x protections and the Marketplaces, but not insurance companies he doesn’t like who would still provide most of the coverage.
Instead of giving money to insurance companies, Trump wants to give money to you, so you can spend it on crappy, unregulated products from insurance companies (in which they spend 50% of revenue on medical bills, rather than the ACA's statutory 80%).
President Trump is suggesting here that people could use government subsidies to buy insurance that doesn’t comply with ACA rules, including coverage of pre-existing conditions. That could lower costs for healthy people, but send the ACA marketplace into a death spiral.
OUT: Helping you pay for health care.
IN: Helping oil companies pay for their infrastructure in a foreign country.
The end of ACA enhanced premium tax credits, and an average out-of-pocket premium increase of 114% for 22 million people, has been hypothetical. Now it is real.
CMS touts Nebraska being first to launch Big Ugly Bill work reporting requirements by...misspelling the name of the state.
acasignups.net/25/12/26/cms...
Happy holidays (not!) to Medicaid expansion enrollees in Nebraska as the state becomes the 1st state to "go early" on the new punitive work reporting requirement.
70,000 will receive notification in the next 2 weeks; sounds like disenrollments will start in May.
www.1011now.com/2025/12/17/l...
The GOP health care bill that Mike Johnson allowed to proceed from the Rules Committee does not extend ePTCs.
It does, however, appropriate CSRs — but only in states with strict restrictions on abortion coverage, which has the paradoxical effect of specifically punishing enrollees in red states.
Why Florida is ground zero for coming ObamaCare storm
Florida will be hit harder than any other state if ObamaCare subsidies expire at the end of the year. More than 1.5 million Floridians could lose healthcare as monthly payments skyrocket.
thehill.com/policy/healt...
A few thoughts on new Medicaid work req guidance from CMS
Topline it says v. little so states remain in a bind with huge demands and little guidance to go on.
But some takeaways:
1. Confirms that states will have access to 90/10 fed match for new IT systems (vendors are 😀).
🧵
Pending Medicaid work rules exempt people deemed “medically frail.” Lacking clear federal guidance, state officials are trying to interpret the rules to ensure people don’t unfairly lose health coverage. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...
Reports that the White House is working on a proposal to extend premium tax credit enhancements shows the Administration is acknowledging the urgent need to address premium spikes for millions of marketplace enrollees. But big questions remain.🧵
📣 Trump apparently set to reverse himself on #ACA tax credits...but with several poison pills included...
acasignups.net/25/11/24/tru...
If you're 60, live in Crested Butte, CO, and earn $63k, you can get a Bronze plan in the Colorado Marketplace for as little as $36/month this year.
Next year, if Congress doesn't extend the subsidy enhancements, the lowest-cost plan will be $1,282/month www.healthinsurance.org/aca-marketpl...
In all the years I have worked in health policy GOP/conservative proposals always boil down to the same ideas: block grant/cap #Medicaid, Medicare premium support, unregulated individual health insurance markets and tax-favored accounts like Health Savings Accounts. So we’re back to HSAs this week.
Sen. Lindsey Graham — quoted here by Jake Sherman — objecting to ACA subsidy extension bc “it would enrich health insurance companies even more”
Republicans waged a relentless, decades-long campaign to privatize Medicare and Medicaid
They fought even mild efforts to expand public insurance
Now they are objecting to extending extra ACA subsidies, supposedly because money flows to private insurers
We are supposed to take this seriously?
It’s not just that they don’t have to turn off SNAP benefits — they’re not legally allowed to. They legally must use the contingency fund.
The admin is pretending they can’t use it even though their own guidance from a month ago (that they’ve since deleted) contradicts that.
🚨The rule is likely to be the largest-ever cut to Social Security Disability Insurance.
🚨The rule would particularly hurt older workers.
🚨The rule will likely cause disproportionate harm to people living in the South and Appalachia.
www.cbpp.org/blog/trump-a...
New reporting: many apparently fired at CDC in 'error'. This is a failure by design given that the admin does not care about fulfilling agency missions. This is the kind of error that should have political consequences.
Unserious people cause real-world harm.
🎁
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/h...
There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.
America’s children deserve better than this.
Roberts is presiding over, and driving, a stunning collapse in faith in the U.S. Supreme Court, not just among the public, but among federal judges.
What a failure. The Titanic captain of chief justices.
NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4
BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:
KFF graphic featuring a quote from Cynthia Cox, KFF Vice President and Director of the Program on the ACA. It says, “The enhanced premium tax credits lower the percent of income people have to pay across the board. For subsidized enrollees, what they pay each month is not up to insurers, it’s up to Congress... In other words, when we say premium payments will go up 114%, most of that increase is just based on a formula set by Congress.”
⚡ KFF’s @cynthiaccox.bsky.social explains how Congress can still prevent the vast majority of ACA enrollees from facing higher premium costs — even if insurer premiums are already locked in. #QuickTake https://on.kff.org/46V968K
KFF graph showing that more than 3 in 4 adults (78%) support extending the enhanced premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage, based on a KFF Health Tracking Poll from September 23-29, 2025.
New KFF polling finds most Americans say they want Congress to extend the enhanced ACA tax credits that help make Marketplace coverage more affordable. https://on.kff.org/4q7ElGy
This is a remarkable statistic: 18.7 million out of the 24.3 million Obamacare enrollees are in states won by President Trump in 2024.
www.kff.org/quick-take/m...