37,000 of our neighbors are about to pay a lot more for health insurance

As in, double or triple what they pay now. What is John McGuire doing for them?

As you’ve probably read, Democrats in Congress won’t vote to reopen the government unless Republicans agree to extend tax credits that help people buy health insurance. Although they haven’t made a formal proposal, Republicans variously would like to see these tax credits wind down entirely or be cut down to a mere nub reformed.

The closest thing to a public statement that I can find from John McGuire is an op-ed that he cosigned, which repeats the lie that the Democratic party wants to give “taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants.”

I’ll come back to that subject below, but for the moment let’s stick with tax credits for health insurance. Right now, these credits help 37,000 of our neighbors in VA-05 lower their monthly premiums.

How much more will they pay if the tax cuts expire? It depends on where they live, how much they make, and how many people are at home. I plugged a few examples into this handy calculator provided by KFF, using the median income for each locality.

In Danville, a single parent with two kids who makes $43,000 will pay $150 more every month—that’s an 84 percent increase.

In Lynchburg, a family of two adults and two kids who makes $60,000 will pay $225 more every month, a 300 percent increase.

In Charlottesville, two adults in their late 50s with no kids at home and both earning $70,000 will pay $600 more every month, up 60 percent from today’s premium.

In Fluvanna County, a family of five earning $92,000 will pay $1,649 more per month. That’s almost 20 grand more a year and a 250 percent increase.

You can also run the numbers by a household’s poverty level instead of its income. For example, in Danville, a family of four living at twice the poverty level will pay $246 more every month, a 230 percent increase.

Here I was, thinking the Republican party opposed tax hikes.

Side note: Starting in 2026, insurers in Virginia will be able to charge you more if you smoke. The legislature passed a law this year to permanently prohibit them from doing this, but Glenn Youngkin vetoed it. Although federal law caps the extra fee at 50 percent, Virginia might have a lower ceiling. I couldn’t find a definitive number, though.

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No, Democrats are not proposing taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants

McGuire’s latest newsletter has this to say about the shutdown. Note the second bubble, on health care:

“According to section 2141 of the Democrats’ counterproposal to fund the government, they are demanding a provision that would give illegal aliens access to free healthcare.”

Not true. Federal law prohibits using federal programs to pay for health care for people who are here illegally, except for emergency room care, and nothing in the Democrats’ proposal would change that.

What Democrats want is to repeal some restrictions that Trump and congressional Republicans recently placed on exactly which non-citizens can get Medicaid and CHIP. It used to be, for instance, that refugees and asylees were eligible, but Trump’s One Big Odious Bill struck many of them—including Afghans and Ukrainians—off the list. Democrats want to put them back on.

In other words, Democrats aren’t proposing anything new; they’re proposing a return to the way it was. And they don’t want health care for illegal aliens; they want to reinstate it for the refugees, asylum-seekers, and other non-citizens who are here legally. What a fiendish plot!