The Government Shutdown & the Affordable Care Act
[WASHINGTON, DC] – As of October 1st, 2025, the federal government has shut down. Blumenthal spoke on the Senate Floor ahead of the deadline to fund the government to ask his Republican colleagues to join Democrats in taking action to prevent the looming health care crisis by extending the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits that have made health care more affordable for tens of millions of Americans, including thousands of Connecticut residents.
“At the end of the day, it's a choice", Blumenthal said. "Do we choose a highly successful solution that has reduced health care costs for the whole nation, or do we allow the clock to run out and raise health care costs for families in every state in this country? You know, I’m always struck in this building by how human problems and impacts can be reduced to abstract statistics. And for anyone who has gone to health clinics as I have done as recently as just a few days ago to renew my sense of reality, there are real human costs in children suffering, pain that is experienced by people when you have an illness. There’s a physical pain; there’s a mental anxiety, and often people fail to get treatment because they think they can save money—and the illness gets worse and more costly, and people wind up in emergency rooms,” Blumenthal said.
“There are a couple of very simple, straightforward conditions that the Democrats are demanding…” Blumenthal said. “The health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act expire at the end of the year. Open enrollment begins in Connecticut on November 1. People need to know whether they can afford health insurance before they enroll. Without the subsidies they will pay, on average, 75% more for health care.”
“Nothing is more important than (Americans’) health and we are saving health care for the American people by insisting that this extension of government funding include a reversal of the cruel …betrayal that failed to continue those health care subsidies, and insist that whatever the bill that is passed be followed through by the president,” Blumenthal said. “The ACA premium tax credits have protected millions of Americans from those higher health care costs, and they have reduced the number of Americans without health insurance coverage.”
Note: The ACA, passed under President Obama, was done not only to insure more Americans, but also to reduce the more expensive ER visits that drove medical costs to an unsustainable level.
