\n Americans wracked by economic insecurity can\u2019t wait. Nor can Republican lawmakers, who fear the president\u2019s response \u2014 which is largely to blame his predecessor Joe Biden \u2014 will doom their reelection chances next year.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cEvery bill we bring to the floor should be focused on lowering the cost of living for people who need it most,\u201d Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of the most at-risk Republicans in the 2026 midterms, told CNN\u2019s \u201cInside Politics Sunday.\u201d<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n The Senate is expected to vote as soon as this week on whether to extend expiring subsidies on Affordable Care Act programs as part of last month\u2019s deal to end the government shutdown. If Congress doesn\u2019t act, millions will face a choice<\/a> between much higher premiums or simply going without coverage.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump meanwhile is expected to hold an event in Pennsylvania on making prices more affordable, as his administration faces increasing pressure to demonstrate it understands an issue that was instrumental in his election last year.\n <\/p>\n \n The prospects of decisive action this week on either score are low, however.\n <\/p>\n \n A plan to address Republican qualms while extending enhanced subsidies without major reforms to Obamacare doesn\u2019t yet exist<\/a>. And even if the Senate finds a compromise, there\u2019s little appetite among Republicans in Speaker Mike Johnson\u2019s narrow House majority to save a law they\u2019ve always hated.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump fumes even at the word \u201caffordability\u201d \u2014 regarding it as a Democratic \u201choax\u201d \u2014 and is wallowing in denial about an economy that he claims has entered a \u201cgolden age\u201d but that is making many working- and middle-class Americans feel poorer. And while Trump has taken some steps to try to lower costs<\/a> \u2014 of certain prescription drugs, for example \u2014 his wider policies may be making the situation worse.\n <\/p>\n \n The administration tacitly admitted as much when it recently cut import duties<\/a> on coffee, bananas and other staples to ease the pain of consumers.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAs a nation, we have much to be grateful for this holiday season,\u201d Trump said while lighting the National Christmas Tree last week, proclaiming big wins on the border, national security and ending wars. He also said, \u201cOur economy is thriving, inflation has stopped, our nation is strong, and America is back bigger and better, stronger, better than ever before.\u201d This may be one issue where the president\u2019s talent for branding can\u2019t get him out of a political hole.\n <\/p>\n \n A CNN\/SSRS poll last month found 61% of Americans said Trump\u2019s policies have \u201cworsened economic conditions in this country.\u201d A recent CBS survey found only 36% approved of Trump\u2019s handling of the economy, a onetime strength.\n <\/p>\n \n The contradiction between the president\u2019s claims of success and the lived experience of many Americans raises the question of whether Trump, a billionaire, and his wealthy Cabinet have lost touch with what the country is feeling.\n <\/p>\n \n The fight over health care is the most urgent and visible clash in the affordability crisis.\n <\/p>\n \n If the enhanced subsidies expire at the end of the year, enrollees will face payments that many can\u2019t afford \u2014 doubling from $888 to $1,904 next year on average, according to a new poll<\/a> from KFF, a nonpartisan health policy group.\n <\/p>\n \n The stark politics of this issue for Republicans explain why Democrats picked the subsidies as the trigger for the government shutdown. They failed to achieve their goal, but highlighted the catch-22 of GOP lawmakers who want to kill Obamacare but whose success would hurt millions of their voters who rely on the program.\n <\/p>\n \n Some Republicans are pushing to extend the subsidies, to give them time to draw up a more permanent replacement health care plan. Others want reform before agreeing to an extension. But then the question becomes how to help Americans who suddenly find themselves with premiums they can\u2019t afford.\n <\/p>\n \n The conundrum was encapsulated by Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union\u201d on Sunday.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cJust to extend three years something that has not been working that was meant to be temporary from the beginning is not a good vote,\u201d Curtis told Dana Bash.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe need a minimum premium for people, even if it\u2019s a couple of bucks. We know we need a cap on income,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we actually lower the cost, not just of insurance, but of health care? And then what do we do in the interim while we\u2019re waiting to do that?\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n As Curtis implied, the chances of a workable reform to Obamacare in the few days Congress is in session before the holidays seem remote.\n <\/p>\n \n Meanwhile, most people have already been forced to make their health care budget decisions for next year. This is why some Republicans say a vote to extend subsidies is the only answer. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a better plan, then get on board with ours,\u201d Fitzpatrick told CNN\u2019s Manu Raju on \u201cInside Politics Sunday.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Trump has hardly helped the situation. He has repeatedly failed to lay down a blueprint or to take the complexities of the health insurance market seriously during two presidential terms. He did vaguely suggest that Congress should set up health savings accounts but has put no political muscle behind it. The White House also recently pulled back a plan<\/a> to extend subsidies amid GOP opposition. Democrats are meanwhile salivating at the prospect of highlighting health care costs in campaign ads they can aim at swing-seat voters next year.\n <\/p>\n \n The president is expected to head to Pennsylvania, a state he won in 2024, this week to show solidarity with voters fed up with high prices. But he seems unlikely to ease his political situation, or the economic well-being of working Americans by talking about it. He is resistant to accepting the issue\u2019s political potency. And in the past, he\u2019s struggled to stick to a script and mocked advisers who suggest he needs to show economic empathy.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey wanted to do a speech on the economy, so we are doing this as an intellectual speech. You are all intellectuals today,\u201d he told a crowd in North Carolina in 2024.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump has always been more of a cheerleader than a feel-your-pain president. Yet his transformation of the Republican Party into a populist movement was rooted in his intimate connection with many White, working-class voters who felt deserted \u2014 culturally and economically by Democrats. But Trump doesn\u2019t seem ready to commit to any strategy that accepts his second term is not a roaring triumph.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cOur country is wealthy again and secure again,\u201d he said during a Cabinet meeting last week. \u201cThere\u2019s this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about affordability. They just say the word, it doesn\u2019t mean anything to anybody, just say, \u2018affordability.\u2019\u201d Trump may have a point here, although next year, newly elected Democratic governors in New Jersey and Virginia must live up to campaign promises to cut prices similar to ones the president made in 2024.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump is also correct to say that inflation spiked under Biden. But his claims that he has halted the inflation rate are not true. It recently ticked up to 2.8%<\/a>, meaning the rate at which prices are going up is still rising. And an administration that takes pains to court corporations and the oligarchs of the tech industry is yet to convince working Americans it cares as much about them.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s frequent announcements of billions of dollars in investment in the US by foreign companies and states do look good \u2014 even if they don\u2019t always live up<\/a> to his billing. And even if such projects come off, they\u2019ll be a long-term proposition and won\u2019t ease prices quickly. Trump\u2019s pledge to appoint a new Federal Reserve chair<\/a> who will cut interest rates faster could lower mortgage rates and stimulate the housing market. But it could also unleash a new inflation crisis.\n <\/p>\n \n While Trump insists everything is great now, some subordinates, including Vice President JD Vance, who as a potential future GOP presidential candidate must not alienate voters, are more nuanced in recognizing some Americans are hurting. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a sunny prediction on Sunday. \u201cThe economy has been better than we thought,\u201d he told CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d Lashing out at \u201cembedded inflation\u201d left over from the Biden administration, he said: \u201cI think, next year, we\u2019re going to move on to prosperity.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But voters have heard blame games and optimism before. Successive elections have failed to deliver tangible change. Affordability is a defining issue, that does exist, no matter what Trump says, and it\u2019s become a curse of incumbents.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump has a fresh chance this week to act on a priority voters continually say they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-304515","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\/304515","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=304515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ap25338860666882.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Signs](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-11-24t191020z-1214534759-rc2szy9okyky-rtrmadp-3-health-usa-obamacare.jpg\")
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