Democrats crumble like cookies. Is this really the best they can do?
The Democrats crumbled like soft biscuits.
The so-called Resistance Party has abandoned the fight against the lockdown, ensuring that millions of Americans will face skyrocketing Republican-created health care costs and that millions more will bury any hope that the minority party will find the substance and leadership to mount a viable defense against Trump.
On Sunday night, eight defector Democrats sold out all Americans who paid for their own health insurance through the affordable marketplaces established by President Obama.
As has been widely reported in recent weeks, Republicans are determined to make insurance completely out of financial reach for many Americans by refusing to help them pay premiums with the subsidies that are part of the current law, available to low- and middle-income families.
Republicans – for reasons that are hard to understand other than their hatred of Obama, and apparently basics like the flu shot – have long wanted to kill the ACA and are now on the verge of doing so, in spirit if not in reality, thanks to the Democrats.
Trump must be doing his old man romp in the Oval Office.
The pain this cowardly collapse will cause is already evident. Prices for 2026 without government subsidies have been announced and premiums have doubled on average, according to nonpartisan health policy researcher KFF. Double.
Insurance companies plan to raise their rates by about 18%, which is already devastating and symptomatic of the need for a total overhaul of our messy system. This increase, coupled with the loss of subsidies from the start of next year, means a 114% increase in costs for people who rely on this insurance. Premiums that cost an average of $888 in 2025 will increase to $1,904 in 2026, according to KFF.
But it is people with middle incomes who will be most affected.
“On average, a 60-year-old couple earning $85,000 (…) would see their annual premiums increase by more than $22,600 in 2026,” KFF warns, meaning that instead of spending 8.5% of their total income on health insurance, this amount will now increase to around 25%.
Merry Christmas, America.
If the eight Democrats who left their party to allow this to happen are directly responsible (fortunately, our California senators are not among them), Democratic leaders should be held accountable as well.
A party that fails to stay united during very big votes is not a party. It’s a group of people who occasionally have lunch together. Literally, they had one job: stay together.
The failure of Democratic leaders to ensure their Senate votes don’t break in this intense moment is not only shameful, it’s depressing. Despite all the condemnation of Republican members of Congress for failing to uphold their duty to check the power of the presidency, here is the opposition party falling flat on its face on the crucial issue of health care.
As California Rep. Ro Khanna said on social media: “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop health care premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
If there is one lesson to be learned from the recent elections, it is that Democrats – and voters in general – need courage. Love or hate Zohran Mamdani, his victory as mayor of New York was due in large part to his boldness in forging his own path. Ditto for Governor Gavin Newsom and Proposition 50.
Mamdani expressed this sentiment best in his victory speech, promising a time when people can “expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt.”
Before you start sending me angry emails, yes, I understand how painful the shutdown is, especially for furloughed workers and people facing disruptions to their SNAP benefits. I empathize with all the people who don’t know how they’re going to pay their bills.
But here are the facts we cannot forget. The Republicans deliberately intensified this pain in order to break the Democrats. Trump has found ways to pay his deportation agents, while not paying essential workers such as airport screeners and air traffic controllers, where the chaos created by their absence is both visible and disruptive. He also threatened not to return their salaries to some of these people once this situation ends.
And on the “give in or not eat” front, the courts actually ordered him to pay those SNAP benefits and he’s fighting it. Republicans could easily band together and demand that the money be spent while the rest is spent, but they don’t want to. They want people to be hungry so the Democrats will break, and it has worked.
But at what cost?
Around 24 million people will be affected by these premium increases, leaving up to 4 million unable to keep their insurance. Unable to go to the doctor for routine care. Unable to pay for cancer treatments. Unable to look at this growth, this pain, this broken bone. Impossible to get their child vaccinated against the flu.
In many ways, this is not a California problem. The majority of these people live in Republican Southern states that refused to expand Medicaid when they had the chance. According to KFF, about 6 in 10 grant recipients are represented by Republicans, led by those living in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. But the Americans have made it clear that we want access to care to be for all of us, as a right and not as an expensive privilege.
Which makes it all the more mysterious that Democrats are so willing to give up, on an issue that unites voters of all parties, across all demographics, across our seemingly infinite divisions.
But I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles.
