{"id":172438,"date":"2025-10-01T09:10:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T09:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/172438\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:10:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T09:10:20","slug":"why-healthcare-spending-is-at-the-center-of-the-us-government-shutdown-battle-us-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/172438\/","title":{"rendered":"Why healthcare spending is at the center of the US government shutdown battle | US politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the federal government shuts down on Wednesday, it will likely be, in part, due to a battle between Democrats<\/a> and Republicans<\/a> over healthcare spending.<\/p>\n

The Democrats have said that they will not vote<\/a> for legislation to keep the government open unless Donald Trump<\/a> and Republicans, who hold the majority in Congress, agree to reverse cuts to Medicaid<\/a> and extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans.<\/p>\n

In June, the US president approved legislation he calls his \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u201d, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $793bn and increase the number of uninsured people<\/a> by 7.8 million.<\/p>\n

The savings in federal Medicaid spending will largely come from the implementation of the new requirements<\/a>, which include completing 80 hours of work or community service activities per month, or meeting exemption criteria.<\/p>\n

The law also means that the premium tax credits implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic for insurance purchased through the Health Insurance Marketplace will expire at the end of 2025. That would make coverage more expensive and lead to 3.1 million more people without health insurance, according to the CBO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of everyday Americans,\u201d Jeffries said<\/a> following a negotiation with Trump and Republican leaders on Monday.<\/p>\n

The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer<\/a>, also said after the meeting that the Democrats had talked about the impact of the cuts in healthcare spending on rural hospitals<\/a> and individuals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Based on Trump\u2019s \u201cface and the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time\u201d, Schumer said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump said<\/a> during an Oval Office press conference on Tuesday that if the parties can\u2019t reach an agreement, \u201cwe can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them,\u201d Trump said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon. \u201cLike cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He did not mention Medicaid<\/a> or the Affordable Care Act but said: \u201cWe can do things medically and other ways, including benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, there could be an opening for negotiation. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, said on the Senate floor<\/a> on Tuesday that the Democrats should vote to keep the government open until 21 November and that he would be happy to fix the \u201cACA credit issue\u201d before the credits expire at the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the federal government shuts down on Wednesday, it will likely be, in part, due to a battle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-172438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}