Democrats shut down the government supposedly over Obamacare.
The real reason has nothing to do with helping Americans afford health care.
And Congress just ripped the blinders off one dirty secret about Obamacare that will have Americans up in arms.
Democrats holding government hostage over expiring handouts
The federal government just went through yet another shutdown battle with Democrats digging in their heels.
Their ransom demand? Extending billions in enhanced Obamacare subsidies that were supposed to expire at the end of 2025.¹
These so-called temporary COVID relief payments have ballooned into a permanent welfare program Democrats won't let go of.
The Congressional Budget Office revealed extending these enhanced subsidies would cost taxpayers $350 billion over the next decade.²
That's more money than the federal government spends on the Department of the Interior, the FBI, and NASA combined.
Only 6.5% of Americans actually benefit from these subsidies — yet Democrats are willing to shut down the entire government to keep the gravy train rolling.³
Meanwhile, half of all Exchange enrollees actually qualify for completely "free" premiums already.
But the real beneficiaries aren't actually even patients.
Insurance companies are raking in about $40 billion per year courtesy of American taxpayers.⁴
Fraud running rampant through Obamacare exchanges
The Congressional Budget Office finally admitted what conservatives have been saying for years.
The enhanced subsidies created a massive fraud problem that's costing taxpayers billions.
CBO confirmed that 2.3 million Obamacare enrollees in 2025 "improperly claimed premium tax credits, often by misreporting income to qualify for subsidies for which they were not eligible."⁵
These fraudsters are lying about their income to qualify for subsidies they don't deserve.
CBO noticed an "unusual concentration of enrollees reporting income just above" the poverty level — the exact threshold needed to qualify for maximum subsidies.⁶
The scale of this scam is staggering.
Applying the average Exchange subsidy to these 2.3 million fraudulent enrollees equals approximately $13.9 billion in taxpayer losses per year.⁷
The Paragon Health Institute conducted an even broader investigation into Obamacare fraud.
Their research found 6.4 million potentially fraudulent enrollees, meaning the federal government is hemorrhaging $27.1 billion this year alone to pay for people who shouldn't qualify.⁸
Nearly half of all Exchange enrollees — 45% — now report incomes that qualify them for completely "free" premiums with zero out-of-pocket costs.⁹
That number has exploded since Congress passed enhanced subsidies during the Biden administration.
Corrupt Democrats and RINOs designed this system to encourage fraud and then looked the other way while it happened.
Taxpayers funding abortion and transgender surgeries through backdoor
Democrats and their media allies won't tell you the real reason they're desperate to extend these subsidies.
Obamacare exchange plans cover both abortion and so-called "gender-affirming" procedures — all subsidized with your tax dollars.
Right now, taxpayer funds are directly flowing to insurance plans covering transgender surgeries in states like Colorado.¹⁰
Colorado's Division of Insurance website openly lists the genital surgeries, facial feminization procedures, and hormone treatments that exchange plans must cover.¹¹
Twenty-four states have "nondiscrimination provisions" that force insurers covering mastectomies for breast cancer to also cover the same procedure as part of transgender treatments.¹²
The Trump Administration tried to stop this by issuing a regulation eliminating "specified sex-trait modification procedures" from Obamacare's essential health benefits.¹³
Blue states immediately sued to block it.
And California passed a law requiring medical providers and insurers to undergo "cultural competency training" designed by transgender activists — political indoctrination paid for with federal subsidy dollars.¹⁴
The abortion funding is even worse.
Maryland created a law allowing the state to raid premium dollars collected for abortion coverage and funnel them to abortion tourism initiatives that pay for procedures and travel — including for women who aren't even enrolled in Obamacare.¹⁵
Money is fungible.
When federal subsidies make health insurance plans that cover abortion more affordable, they're making abortion itself more affordable.¹⁶
Back in 2009, the House actually passed the Stupak-Pitts Amendment with bipartisan support that would have prevented federal funds from going to any health plan covering abortion.¹⁷
Dozens of Democrats voted for it.
But Senate Democrat leadership stripped it out before ramming Obamacare through on a party-line vote.¹⁸
President Obama promised he would sign an executive order limiting abortion funding, but that was always a sham because executive orders can't override what's written into law.
The government still pays most premiums even without enhanced subsidies
Democrats are trying to scare Americans by claiming health insurance will become "unaffordable" should the enhanced subsidies expire.
The data tells a very different story.
Without the enhanced subsidies, the federal government would still pay 75-80% of enrollees' premiums on average.¹⁹
The Kaiser Family Foundation — a left-wing think tank — admitted that eliminating enhanced subsidies would only reduce the federal government's share from paying 88% of premiums to "only" about 78%.²⁰
Most households would face premium increases of no more than $100 per month with the enhanced subsidies expiring.²¹
KFF found the average impact would be $1,016 per year, or $84.67 monthly.²²
The Urban Institute concluded that households with incomes below 250% of the poverty level — who get the richest subsidies and make up roughly three-quarters of all enrollees — would pay an average of $750 more per year, or $62.50 monthly.²³
Those are averages, which means the impact on most families would actually be lower.
Only 7% of Exchange enrollees have incomes above four times the poverty level and would lose subsidies entirely.²⁴
The Urban Institute believes most of these higher-income families would simply pick up employer coverage instead.
Republicans must stand firm against this welfare state expansion
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democrats just shut down the government to force Republicans to extend these corrupt subsidies.
Senator Ron Johnson exposed what's really at stake.
"I don't see how they could possibly vote for an extension of these, again, temporary COVID pandemic, enhanced subsidies that would perpetuate a massive fraud and fund abortions and transgender surgeries, probably for minors," Johnson stated.²⁵
Senator Mike Lee agreed that Democrats are "holding their government hostage, not just for health care for illegals, but for a host of other things voters soundly rejected last year, like federal dollars subsidizing abortion and transgender surgeries."²⁶
Pro-life groups are demanding Congress attach Hyde Amendment protections to any subsidy extension.
The Hyde Amendment has blocked federal funding for abortion in other health programs for decades — but Obamacare was specifically designed to avoid those protections.
"Democrats wrote Obamacare intentionally this way, specifically to avoid the Hyde Amendment, so that they could squeeze an abortion coverage in these plans and make sure that taxpayer dollars were propping these plans up," explained Kelsey Pritchard of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.²⁷
Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
They should let these enhanced subsidies expire as scheduled on December 31st.
Extending them means voting to continue massive fraud, expand taxpayer funding of abortion and transgender procedures, and perpetuate a welfare state expansion that does nothing to actually make health care more affordable for working Americans.
President Trump was right when he said Democrats are trying to "force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery."²⁸
The only way to stop it is to let the COVID-era subsidies expire and return to the original Obamacare subsidy structure from 2010 — or better yet, repeal Obamacare entirely then, completely dismantle the government-subsidized health care and pass real reforms of the third-party payer health care system.
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¹ Congressional Budget Office, "The Effects of Not Extending the Expanded Premium Tax Credits," December 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Sally C. Pipes, "Enhanced Obamacare subsidies are the problem," Boston Herald, October 24, 2025.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ways and Means Committee, "CBO: Democrats Covered Up Widespread Fraud and Abuse in Federal Health Programs," September 2, 2025.
⁶ Christopher Jacobs, "CBO Estimates Billions Lost To Obamacare Exchange Fraud," The Federalist, September 19, 2025.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Paragon Health Institute, "Obamacare Enrollment Fraud More Expensive and More Widespread in 2025," PR Newswire, June 17, 2025.
⁹ Christopher Jacobs, "6 Reasons Congress Should Let The Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies Expire," The Federalist, October 30, 2025.
¹⁰ Christopher Jacobs, "Here Are All The Transgender Medical Experiments Your Tax Dollars Are Funding Through Obamacare," The Federalist, October 3, 2025.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Christopher Jacobs, "6 Reasons Congress Should Let The Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies Expire," The Federalist, October 30, 2025.
¹⁴ Center for Renewing America, "Obamacare Subsidies and Transgender Procedures," September 2025.
¹⁵ Christopher Jacobs, "6 Reasons Congress Should Let The Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies Expire," The Federalist, October 30, 2025.
¹⁶ Center for Renewing America, "Obamacare Subsidies and Transgender Procedures," September 2025.
¹⁷ "Pro-Life Groups Fight to Stop Abortion Funding in Obamacare," LifeNews.com, October 20, 2025.
¹⁸ Ibid.
¹⁹ Christopher Jacobs, "6 Reasons Congress Should Let The Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies Expire," The Federalist, October 30, 2025.
²⁰ Ibid.
²¹ Ibid.
²² KFF, "ACA Marketplace Premium Payments Would More than Double on Average Next Year if Enhanced Premium Tax Credits Expire," October 2025.
²³ Christopher Jacobs, "6 Reasons Congress Should Let The Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies Expire," The Federalist, October 30, 2025.
²⁴ Ibid.
²⁵ "Senators Slam Democrats for Pushing Tax-Funded Abortions: 'They Want to Kill Babies,'" LifeNews.com, October 10, 2025.
²⁶ Ibid.
²⁷ "Pro-Life Groups Fight to Stop Abortion Funding in Obamacare," LifeNews.com, October 20, 2025.
²⁸ Christopher Jacobs, "Here Are All The Transgender Medical Experiments Your Tax Dollars Are Funding Through Obamacare," The Federalist, October 3, 2025.
