One of the ironies of this fight is that Democrats are shutting the government down to protect and extend tax credits that heavily disproportionately benefit red states, because in a bunch of these red states they didn’t expand Medicaid, and it means more people get the tax credits. So you have more than 10 percent of the population now, in Florida, in Texas, in Georgia, in South Carolina, in Utah, using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. Talk to me a bit about both the policy and the politics of that. I mean, the politics of health care has been really odd over the last decade or so, because while we have gotten 40 states to do Medicaid expansions, there are 10 states that have not passed Medicaid expansion. In those states, you do see a much higher percentage of people on the exchange markets, just because they’re so clearly desperate to have health and they can’t really get it. And of course, I think it is kind of insane. We live in a country where you have states where if you’re slightly higher income, you get into the exchange markets, but really low-income people don’t have it. I do think that is very perverted. And I’m glad that over a decade, so many more states have come on. But that does end up being a situation where, as Kaiser Family Foundation has noted, we’re talking about 75 percent of people in these exchange markets, really being in places that Trump won. So it’s just a long way of saying that Republicans who are choosing essentially to make people in their states who already are struggling — I mean, these are not wealthy people — just face, again, not just a slight premium increase but a real premium shock. So this gets to the politics of this in an interesting way. The Kaiser Family Foundation did a poll on whether or not people thought these credits should be extended, whether or not the tax credits should be extended, they did this roughly at the end of September. 78 percent of Americans were in support of extending the tax credits. You don’t get that high of a number for many things anymore, but that included majorities of not just self-described Republicans but self-identified MAGA supporters. It had nearly 60 percent support from people who said they were MAGA. There was a Wall Street Journal story the other day where Trump administration officials were starting to say anonymously that they’re actually worried about this, that they feel that this is actually a tough thing for them to own. It’s not going to be great for them if health care premiums skyrocket for millions of people on their watch. The shutdown fight is a partisan fight. The politics of this, the polling of this, who it helps, who it hurts, are not a partisan issue. It does not break along partisan lines.
