This Georgia mom highlights the price Republicans will pay for rising health care costs

It has taken some time, but the American public is finally beginning to understand what Republicans in Washington are doing to our nation’s health care system, including the Affordable Care Act that now covers an estimated 24 million people.

“When the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE,” one North Georgia mother exclaimed this week on social media. “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!

“WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ABSOLUTELY INSANE COST OF INSURANCE FOR AMERICANS,” she concluded, in all capital letters.

That exasperated mother is Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican representing Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. And her adult children are not the only ones experiencing sticker shock because tax credits are expiring at the end of this year.

For example: “On average, a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 would see yearly premium payments rise by over $22,600 in 2026, after accounting for an annual premium increase of 18 percent,” according to health care analysts at KFF. “This would bring the cost of a benchmark plan to about a quarter of this couple’s annual income.”

If you’re wondering what the government shutdown is all about, this explains a lot of it. Democrats have been warning for months that the ACA subsidies that keep health insurance affordable will expire at the end of the year without congressional action, but as Greene notes in her typically flamboyant fashion, Republican leaders have done nothing to address the problem.

Democrats say that if the subsidies are reinstated, they’ll provide enough Democratic votes in the Senate to fund the government. In response, Republicans say nothing.

Current projections are that without such action, 450,000 Georgians will be forced to drop their insurance coverage through the ACA because they can no longer afford it, and that in turn will send ripples throughout the state’s health care infrastructure.

According to a second analysis, this one by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that would mean a loss of $1.6 billion in revenue to hospitals and other health-delivery systems in Georgia, with particular impact on struggling rural hospitals.

But if you believe Republican leadership in Washington, none of this is happening. They continue to claim that Democrats are demanding free health care for illegal immigrants as their price for reopening the government, while Democrats continue to insist that is not true.

Democrats point out, correctly, that longstanding federal law bars illegal immigrants from coverage under Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats say they have no intention of trying to change that.

Essentially, Republicans are caught in a trap of their own making. Polls continue to show stronger and stronger support for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Two-thirds of Americans now say they support the program, compared to just 33 percent who are still opposed. Last month, a KFF poll found that 78 percent of Americans support extending the tax credit subsidies, while just 22 percent oppose it.

That 22 percent, however, is largely the MAGA base. With Republicans in charge of the House, Senate and White House, any move to extend the Obamacare subsidies would have to come with Republican approval and Republican votes. That would be seen as a deep, intolerable act of betrayal by the GOP base, which has been taught that Obamacare is the work of the devil.

So they do nothing, and doing nothing will come with a price, both for Americans who will lose their health insurance and for the politicians who allowed it to happen.

• Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press.