Enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies benefiting over 20 million Americans expired at the end of last year. It was such a big deal that the need to address it became the principal Democratic rationale for triggering the longest government shutdown in U.S. history last October. It remained a big deal as 2026 arrived: The House actually passed a “clean” three-year extension of the subsidies on January 8, with 17 Republicans joining Democrats on the vote. There were bipartisan negotiations in the Senate to cut a deal that would include some sort of subsidy extension.

Republicans were all over the place on health-care costs more generally, including the Republican in the White House. Some tried to change the subject to non-insurance health-care cost issues like pharmaceuticals. Others spoke of some huge conservative health-care overhaul that would be enacted on a party-line vote using budget reconciliation (a sort of One Big Beautiful Bill Act 2.0). On January 15, Donald Trump himself suddenly announced he was unveiling a “Great Healthcare Plan” that turned out to be a hodgepodge of old Republican gimmicks fleshed out with vague promises, with no real plans for legislation.

And then … everyone got distracted, mostly because federal immigration agents conducted a mass-deportation “surge” in Minneapolis that resulted in two deaths, a terrorized city, worldwide outrage, and a partial........

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