Murray puts spotlight on Idaho as shutdown fight over health care drags on

Oct. 9—WASHINGTON — With the government shutdown in its ninth day and no sign of serious negotiations between the parties to end it, Democrats are counting on sticker shock putting pressure on Republicans when Americans start seeing rising health insurance costs during this fall's open enrollment period.

That period beings Oct. 15 in Idaho, earlier than every other state, a fact Sen. Patty Murray of Washington sought to highlight in a virtual news conference on Thursday with Idaho State Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, a fellow Democrat. While Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, passing a funding bill to reopen the government requires the help of Democrats, who are demanding the GOP extend expiring subsidies that lower the cost of insurance premiums.

"If Republican leaders don't want to talk with Democrats about opening the government and stopping premiums from doubling, well, we're going to talk to the American people about what's at stake," Murray said. "We will lift up the voices of families who are worried their premiums will double."

Wintrow, speaking from the Idaho State Capitol, pointed blame at the Gem State's all-GOP congressional delegation: Reps. Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson and Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch. Simpson leads a subcommittee responsible for government funding, and Crapo chairs the Senate Finance Committee, but none of the four men have publicly engaged in talks to end the impasse.

"I am overwhelmed with calls from people all over the state who are frustrated and afraid about the things that are happening in their health care," she said. "Their stories are remarkably similar. They're worried, they're frustrated and they're asking, 'Why aren't the people we send to Washington helping us?' "

Republicans already passed a bill in the House to continue government funding at 2024 levels until Congress can finish a new full-year spending bill, and they insist that Democrats are overplaying their hand. In addition to the health insurance subsidies, Democrats have demanded the reversal of GOP cuts to Medicaid funding and restrictions on President Donald Trump's ability to cancel funding approved by Congress.

Most House Republicans are in their home districts for a second straight week as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has canceled votes to put pressure on Senate Democrats to pass the bill that already cleared the House. But after Murray told a reporter on Wednesday that Washington's two GOP representatives, Michael Baumgartner and Dan Newhouse, were "home on vacation," Newhouse — who was in fact at the Capitol — posted a photo on X of himself standing in front of the senator's office.

"I'm not in fact on vacation," the Republican from Sunnyside wrote. "I'm here in D.C. whenever you want to meet!"

Despite Newhouse's offer, neither party has so far been willing to budge. In response to a question from The Spokesman-Review, Murray suggested that the notices Americans will soon receive about premium increases during open enrollment periods will put more pressure on the GOP.

"I think Republicans think that this is just going to go away," she said. "But I have to tell you, people are getting those letters in the mail — in Idaho starting in just a few days, in Washington state in a few weeks, every state across the country."

Wintrow said rising health care costs could have political costs for the GOP, noting that Republicans designed their cuts to Medicaid funding to take effect only after the 2026 midterm elections.

"I think if the election were to happen this month, there'd be a whole different response, because people are suffering," she said. "Most of the people in Idaho are Republican, and it's really heartbreaking for me to see that my congressional delegation is not listening."

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., also highlighted Idaho's first-in-the-nation open enrollment period in a post on X on Wednesday, with images showing an example of an estimated premium increase for a Gem State resident.

The increase in premiums varies by income, family size, location and a variety of other factors. The nonpartisan health care research organization KFF estimates that if Congress doesn't extend the tax credits before they expire at year's end, premiums would more than double for Americans who buy their health insurance from state marketplaces such as the Washington Health Benefit Exchange and Your Health Idaho.

"Our neighbors in Idaho are going to face skyrocketing monthly health care costs unless we extend the ACA tax credits," she wrote, referring to the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law often called Obamacare that established the health insurance marketplaces.

In the decade after that law was passed, expensive premiums limited the number of Americans who bought health insurance, so Democrats created more generous — and more costly — subsidies in 2021. Many Democrats in Congress wanted to make those tax credits permanent in 2022, but when some in the party raised concerns about the cost of such a policy, they instead designed the subsidies to expire at the end of 2026.

That's the same deadline that Republicans put on their 2017 tax cuts, and Democrats wagered that the insurance subsidies could be extended in negotiations over the GOP tax cuts. But after Democrats lost control of the House, Senate and White House in 2024, Republicans extended the tax cuts without addressing the insurance subsidies.

A fundamental problem behind the shutdown is that the 100-member Senate requires 60 votes to pass government-funding legislation but just 51 votes to cancel that funding, which Trump has done with virtually no resistance from GOP lawmakers. That means Democrats have little reason to trust the traditionally bipartisan appropriations process unless Republicans agree to raise the bar for clawing back funding. But rather than focusing on that esoteric demand, Democrats have chosen to use their votes to demand concessions on health care, one of the few issues where polls indicate that Americans trust them more than Republicans.

Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.

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