The federal government is expected to shut down by midnight Wednesday morning, and health insurance premiums may be about to skyrocket — particularly in some of the reddest states in the country.
That's according to Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who posted to her official X account on Tuesday that residents of several deep-red states could soon be in for serious sticker shock when shopping for health insurance. She wrote that monthly premiums are expected to jump as high as 346 percent in Alaska; 150 percent in Louisiana; 314 percent in Mississippi; 235 percent in South Dakota; 320 percent in Tennessee; 387 percent in West Virginia and 382 percent in Wyoming. All of those states are represented by 14 Republican senators.
"Republicans are fighting to make sure this happens to their own constituents," she wrote.
Duckworth's figures come from a Tursday report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), which recently broke down how much health insurance premiums would rise in each state if Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies expire at the end of the 2025 calendar year. Premiums could rise sooner than that, as health insurance companies are already calculating the cost of 2026 monthly premiums when the open enrollment period begins on November 1.
Those subsidies, which are formally known as "enhanced premium tax credits," were introduced in 2021 and later extended through the end of 2025 after former President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Americans with incomes above 400 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for the enhanced premium tax credits.
"For example, with the enhanced tax credits in place, an individual making $28,000 will pay no more than around 1 percent ($325) of their annual income towards a benchmark plan," the KFF wrote in its report. "If the enhanced tax credits expire, this same individual would pay nearly 6 percent of their income ($1,562 annually) towards a benchmark plan in 2026."
"In other words, if the enhanced tax credits expire, this individual would experience an increase of $1,238 in their annual premium payments net of the tax credit," the report continued.
Democrats have been pushing Republicans to extend the tax credits in exchange for voting for the government funding bill currently being debated in Congress. So far, Republicans have refused to include an extension. President Donald Trump baselessly accused Democrats of wanting "free healthcare for illegal aliens," even after a reporter reminded him on Tuesday that undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the ACA subsidies Democrats want to extend.