The government shutdown is over, but the animating policy fight at the heart of the shutdown is just beginning. That’s the expiration of the Affordable Care Act expanded health insurance subsidies at the end of the year, which is leading people buying their 2026 insurance on the ACA exchanges to see prices double, triple, or worse. Staff writer Whitney Curry Wimbish talked to many people feeling this burden, wondering whether to go without health insurance or struggle to fit it into their budget. It’s a symptom of a broken system with so much complexity and private actors that it costs much more than in other nations with coherent single-payer systems, without appreciably better results.
This week on our live show, executive editor David Dayen talks to Wimbish about the anxiety millions of people are feeling about affording health insurance this year, and what can be done about it. They also talk about the AI bubble, and how the massive, trillion-dollar build-out of data centers is being financed by dodgy real estate deals that bear more than a little resemblance to the housing bubble that collapsed in 2008.
As we cover the regime in Washington and its impact on your life, we’ll be livestreaming every Friday at 12:30 p.m. ET to give you the information you need to understand the week in news. Join us by subscribing to our YouTube channel today!
