President Donald Trump and his GOP allies in Congress are determined to "dismantle" one of the "federal government's great achievements this century," with the latest piece from the New York Times Editorial Board tearing into them for the situation as it is primed to get worse.
"One of the federal government’s great achievements this century was making health insurance affordable to millions more Americans," the board explained in the Saturday piece. "In 2010, nearly 18 percent of people under 65 lacked insurance. By 2024, the rate had fallen below 10 percent, thanks to the Affordable Care Act and later legislation that built on it. President Trump and congressional Republicans are working to dismantle that achievement. They have effectively cut subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, making it harder for people who do not receive insurance through work to afford a plan. This year, the subsidy cuts led three million people to lose their health insurance. In Ohio, nearly a third of previous marketplace enrollees lost their insurance."
The board further accused Trump and the Republican Party of making a "deliberate" move to hide this situation from midterm voters. The cuts to those ACA subsidies were implemented within the "Big Beautiful Bill" spending package, which is also poised to enact "sweeping cuts to Medicaid," but not until next year, helping the GOP avoid paying a political price for those cuts.
Overall, the board noted that these moves from Republicans are primed to wipe out around half of the gains accomplished by the ACA by 2034, meaning that around 14 million people would lose their health insurance. In doing so, the board explained, they are ruining "a positive counterexample of the government working to genuinely improve people’s live."
"Republicans’ attacks on affordable health care have taken two forms: one more passive, the other more direct," the board explained. "In the passive approach, Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans allowed the expiration of enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats created the marketplaces for people who fell through the cracks. These people did not receive coverage through their jobs, and they were not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid."
It continued later: "In the more direct approach to cutting health care coverage, Republicans targeted Medicaid, the program focused on the poor and disabled. Last year, the federal government enacted what Republicans call a work requirement. In reality, it is a paperwork requirement — one that forces Medicaid enrollees, most of whom are working or have a valid reason for not working, to file repeated documents proving they have a job or a valid exemption. Americans lead busy lives, and many of them may not know of the new requirement. About two in three enrollees who will lose health insurance should, in fact, be eligible for it, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated."
