Did Health Insurance Attack Have To Be This Way?

Insight from Tom Nash.

After Obamacare passed, but before the system was fixed to help more working people, I remember sitting in our Elgin office on what I believe was the day of the 2018 midterm election.

Across from me sat a waitress and her husband—warm, hard-working people like so many of our clients. She had too much income to qualify for help under the Affordable Care Act, but not nearly enough to afford decent health insurance. They were only a few hundred dollars over the limit.

When I asked how she felt about all the debate around health care and the election, she just sighed. “I don’t know who to trust about it all.” No college degree, no fancy title, just someone who knew in her gut that the system wasn’t working for her. And she was right.

A few years later, under the American Rescue Plan (2021), people like her finally got help. The law temporarily removed the income cap and made insurance more affordable for the middle class.

But now, those expanded subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2025. And the new law—what some call the “Big Beautiful Bill”—does nothing to extend them. It’s not the old “repeal-and-replace.” But the kneecapping of the health insurance accessibility of so many is not just quiet neglect either.

Sometimes well-meaning folks ask me on the golf course, “So what does this bill mean for your Social Security Disability clients?” But what they don’t see is how many of our clients have always worked their tails off—like this waitress—and still got left behind.

It’s hard not to feel something is off when billionaires are getting tax breaks while the people who serve us breakfast can’t afford a checkup.

Back in 2017, Republican Senator John McCain made headlines when he gave a dramatic thumbs-down to a last-minute repeal of the ACA. Why? Because he had the honesty to say that his party had no real plan to replace it—especially for people like the waitress sitting across from me at my desk.

That plan still doesn’t exist. And now, with this new law in place, we’ve made dramatic steps backward.

Once again, it’s my waitress and millions like her who will get hurt.

Did it have to be this way?