Even Chicken Little might be embarrassed by the hysterics of congressional Democrats over health care.
Cast your mind back to last year. Democrats forced a 43-day government shutdown. While Republicans have majorities in both houses, they needed Democratic votes to break a Senate filibuster. In exchange for funding the government, Democrats wanted to extend pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.
Without those COVID-era tax credits, Democrats said that plans available in the Affordable Care Act marketplace would bankrupt millions of Americans. “This government shutdown is all about whether Republicans will get away with raising health care premiums by 75% for 20 million Americans and throwing 15 million people off their health care,” Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote on X.
Many prominent Democrats made a similar claim. But the numbers tell a different story.
In 2025, there were 22.1 million enrollments in ACA exchange plans, according to a recent report from the Department of Health and Human Services. This year, there are 19.2 million enrollments. That’s a decline of about 2.9 million, not 15 million. Total enrollment is also significantly higher than the 10.4 million enrollees in 2019. A little perspective makes the dire predictions look silly.
But there’s more to the story. The subsidies the Democrats fought so furiously for enabled fraud.
“By making zero premium plans available to individuals with incomes between 100 and 150 percent of the federal poverty level and removing basic eligibility checks, agents and brokers were able to earn commissions, at scale, by improperly or fraudulently enrolling people, often without their knowledge, given they owed no premium,” the report explains.
The Trump administration estimates that fraudulent enrollments peaked at 5.6 million last year. In addition, the White House estimates there are another 2.6 million phantom enrollments. As a result, it took steps to improve the integrity of the program. These efforts “stopped about 1.5 million enrollees from receiving subsidies they did not qualify for and ended or blocked another 1.4 million through February 2026,” the report found.
In total, 2.9 million people now aren’t receiving subsidies for which they didn’t qualify. This suggests that almost all of the decrease in ACA exchange plan enrollments came from tamping down on fraud and eligibility issues. So much for throwing 15 million people off their health insurance.
Reports warn that insurers on the exchange may seek large premium increases in 2027. Expect Democrats to again start the hype machine. Just remember that they spent months last year warning the health care sky would soon fall. It didn’t.
