MacIver News Minute: The Obamacare Shutdown

Every day, Tony Evers and Tammy Baldwin take to social media to spell out the reason for the government shutdown. Republicans won’t extend the affordable care tax credits – which means the premiums on Obamacare plans will go up. Here’s what they don’t want you to know. Those tax credits are actually massive subsidies paid directly to the insurance companies, and the insurance companies don’t even have to provide affordable plans to get them. They just can’t charge anyone more than 8.5% of their income, and the government takes care of the rest. That’s why Obamacare plans still cost hundreds of dollars a month despite the original promise of the affordable care act to provide affordable healthcare. In the years since it was passed, insurance companies have racked hundreds of billions – if not trillions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies. No wonder why they’re willing to hold the government, and the American people, hostage over it.