(ZeroHedge)—Obamacare remains on center stage nearly a week after the government shutdown ended on Nov. 12.
The health coverage program, formally known as the Affordable Care Act Health Insurance Marketplace, was a driver of the government shutdown as Democrats demanded that temporary enhanced subsidies for the program be made permanent.
The shutdown ended only after Senate Republicans agreed to hold a vote on the matter, though they did not guarantee an outcome.
Democrats generally favor making the enhanced subsidies permanent.
Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have proposed alternatives they say will give Americans greater control over their health care spending and lower premiums.
Trump made it extremely clear what his preferred approach is this morning in a FULL CAPS post on Truth Social: (emphasis ours)
THE ONLY HEALTHCARE I WILL SUPPORT OR APPROVE IS SENDING THE MONEY DIRECTLY BACK TO THE PEOPLE, WITH NOTHING GOING TO THE BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH.
THE PEOPLE WILL BE ALLOWED TO NEGOTIATE AND BUY THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, INSURANCE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else.
This is the only way to have great Healthcare in America!!!
GET IT DONE, NOW.
President DJT
Lawrence Wilson explains below, via The Epoch Times, why Obamacare is a hot issue right now and what both sides are proposing.
Premiums Continue to Rise
Commercial health insurance premiums have risen every year since 2008, according to Health System Tracker, a data collection site run by the nonprofits The Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF.
Obamacare premiums have also risen nearly every year since the program began in 2014, with the exception of 2020–2023. Those were the first years of the enhanced premium subsidies, authorized by Congress as a temporary response to COVID-19 health emergencies.
The enhanced subsidies allowed people making more than four times the federal poverty level to buy subsidized coverage. They also capped the out-of-pocket premium costs at 8 percent of a person’s household income, with the government paying the rest. The enhanced subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Rates have risen each year since 2022 and will increase about 26 percent in 2026, on average, for the Benchmark Silver plan.
Direct Payments to Consumers
Trump floated the idea of giving low- and middle-income Americans a direct payment of $2,000 rather than providing a subsidy that is paid to insurance companies.
That would allow people to purchase their own insurance, Trump said in a Nov. 8 social media post. The president added that this would avoid putting more money into a health coverage system that, he said, provided inferior health coverage.
The White House is in discussion with lawmakers about the idea, Trump told reporters on Nov. 14.
“I’ve had personal talks with some Democrats,” he said, adding that the plan would allow consumers to negotiate their own price with an insurer.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is drafting legislation for a similar plan now. His plan would send money directly to individual Health Savings Accounts, much like Trump suggested.
“They can use it to spend on healthcare, so they can buy direct health care, or they can buy insurance, or [use it for] a co-payment or deductible,” Scott told Reporters on Nov. 10.
Consumers could use the funds to buy any plan authorized by their state’s insurance commission, he added.
Scott and some other Republicans believe the enhanced subsidies drive up the cost of health insurance for everyone while masking the increase to consumers.
“Insurers get paid no matter what—and taxpayers get stuck with the tab,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said in a Nov. 7 speech.
Increasing federal payments in the hope of decreasing costs is “like putting a band-aid on a broken bone,” Cassidy said.
“Instead of paying insurance companies to manage our money, let’s trust Americans to manage their own care—with a pre-funded Federal Flexible Spending Account,” he said.
A Flexible Spending Account is similar to a Health Savings Account but is not owned by the individual and does not roll over from year to year.
Addressing Fraud and Abuse
Republicans generally have been reluctant to extend the enhanced subsidies without also addressing abuse of the Obamacare system, which they say rose dramatically after those subsidies were introduced.
The expiration date indicates that the subsidies were not considered a long-term solution, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a Fox News interview on Nov. 16.
“It creates incentives for fraud,” he said.
Data indicates that 4.4 million people are enrolled in Obamacare, apparently without their knowledge, Dr. Oz said. He noted that, unlike 80 percent of health insurance holders, this population has never used their coverage for a doctor visit, prescription, or any other medical service.
“There are discussions around extending the subsidies, if we deal with the fraud, waste, and abuse,” Dr. Oz said.
Temporary Extension
A bipartisan group of House members has introduced a bill to extend certain tax credits for Obamacare enrollees, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), would extend the “enhanced” premium tax credits for one year, avoiding an abrupt end to a financial benefit many Americans have come to rely on.
“While the enhanced premium tax credit created during the pandemic was meant to be temporary, we should not let it expire without a plan in place. My legislation will protect hardworking Virginians from facing health insurance bills they can’t afford, thus losing much-needed access to care,” Kiggans said in a statement.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a retiring lawmaker who helped negotiate the end of the shutdown, voiced optimism that a bipartisan solution is possible.
“I think there are a number of them who are very serious [about working to lower health coverage costs],” Shaheen told reporters on Nov. 10. She added that any solution would have to address the expiring subsidies.
Separately, a group of 32 bipartisan House members wrote to Senate leaders asking that they be included in any discussions on the upcoming health care reform vote.
“If we work together, our hope is that the bill will not only achieve a sixty-vote majority in the Senate, but will also then move to the House for immediate consideration and passage,” the group wrote, led by Kiggans and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.).
Adding Income Cap
Reps. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) and Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) have introduced legislation to control the cost of extending the enhanced subsidies by imposing an income cap on recipients.
Currently, anyone earning over four times the federal poverty level can qualify for the subsidy. This proposal would cap enrollment at six times the poverty level, or $192,900 for a family of four.
“This will provide short-term relief while we tackle broader reforms to lower the cost of care,” Kiley said in a Nov. 10 statement.
The plan would save approximately $5 billion over two years, the congressmen estimated.
The Senate is expected to vote on changes to Obamacare by mid-December.
That gives the 20 states and the District of Columbia that operate their own Obamacare marketplaces, plus the federal marketplace, about two weeks to make adjustments to their subsidy offers before 2026 coverage begins. Annual enrollment for Obamacare has been open since Nov. 1.
Any solution approved by the Senate must then pass the House and be signed by the president to become law.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
