Political battles are usually won based on appealing to emotion, not to facts, policy or logic.
However, you should still have those facts at your disposal for two reasons: First, they still help you craft appeals to emotion. Second, they also help you craft the actual policy. Besides, I'm a data guy; my primary job is to help put facts & policy into easily-understandable context.
With all the understandable focus on Congressional Republicans efforts to effectively end Medicaid coverage for nearly 21 million Americans enrolled via ACA expansion, there's been much less attention paid to the other looming threat to healthcare coverage: The expiration of the upgraded financial subsidies for ~24.2 million ACA exchange enrollees, which are currently scheduled to end this New Year's Eve.
As I've explained numerous times before, the ACA's original premium subsidy formula was always far too stingy to make individual market policies affordable for many people...and worse yet, the subsidies cut off entirely for households making more than 4 times the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).
Ever since the MAGA Murder Bill (officially H.R. 1, the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act") was passed by Republicans in the U.S. Senate & House and signed into law by Donald Trump a few days ago, I've seen a growing conventional wisdom taking hold on social media: People keep claiming that either all, "nearly all"or at least "most of" the budget cuts & other gutting of various programs and departments won't actually kick in until after the November 2026 midterms.
Now, don't get me wrong--most of those making these claims are well-intentioned; they're saying this cynically, to underscore how disingenuous Congressional Republicans are by back-loading the pain until the midterms are safely in their rearview mirrors. And, to be fair, much of the damage won't being until well after next November.
Over at The New Republic, Greg Sargent has taken this thinking one step further, noting that by delaying so much of the ugliness of the new law until 2027 or beyond...
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.
With the pending dire threat to several of these programs (primarily Medicaid & the ACA) from the House Republican Budget Proposal which recently passed, I'm going a step further and am generating pie charts which visualize just how much of every Congressional District's total population is at risk of losing healthcare coverage.
USE THE DROP-DOWN MENU ABOVE TO FIND YOUR STATE & DISTRICT.