Clarence Dubois sells his Gabor Farms mushrooms during the Harvest Market Festival at the Southeast Raleigh YMCA Oct. 26, 2025. (Courtesy photo)
Ever played Jenga?
It’s the game in which a tower’s blocks are removed until the absence of one causes the entire structure to collapse.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is that consequential piece in the health insurance game, and very shaky, unsteady Republicans are messing with it.
To insert another board game, it’s like the GOP is remaking “The Game of Life,” which simulates the journey through adulthood, college, career, marriage, children, retirement, all the things. Of course, bad journeys on board games are overcome by reshuffling a deck of cards and giving another twirl to the doohickie that spins to indicate how many spaces to advance on the board.
In real life, though, do-overs aren’t so clean.
Sure, federal employees have been unshackled, no longer forced to work without pay after Democrats caved and created a crooked path for Republicans to reopen the government. But plenty of those federal workers had to work side jobs in the interim. The 43-day federal shutdown forced folks living a paycheck-to-paycheck existence to exchange that for a more extreme checking account-to-reserve funds lifestyle.
Unlike board games, real people are the pawns in the game of life. The unpaid federal workers playing catch-up are real people. Folks getting over the trauma of facing hunger because they couldn’t buy groceries through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are real people — all 42 million of them.
The 24 million individuals receiving health insurance through ACA marketplaces? They’re real people. Based on what they saw when open enrollment began Nov. 1, some are considering cancelling coverage and foregoing mental health care, colonoscopies, all of the necessary things to which the politicians who denied them remained privy.
“That scenario is wrong in so many ways,” said Advance Carolina policy director Jovita Lee, Ed.D. “Throughout the shutdown, members of Congress kept getting paid, never had to contemplate losing health insurance. It was a different story for their constituents. So what we have are politicians not only using gerrymandering to pick their voters but also making those voters do free work at airports so they could fly home after leaving work early and unfinished in D.C.”
Air traffic controllers were among the federal workers forced to work without pay during the shutdown.
Most Democrats in Congress voted against the continuing resolution that ultimately reopened the government. They refused to say yes without Republicans agreeing to extend the subsidies that have made ACA marketplace insurance more affordable. Without the subsidies, people are poised to pay hundreds of dollars more per month for health insurance premiums.
Even if you don’t get insurance through an ACA marketplace, you’re still prone to paying more for health care. You see, like Jenga, health care is a collective thing. As rumblings permeate about people pulling out of ACA marketplaces because they can’t afford coverage, leaders at insurance companies will hear that and raise costs to compensate for folks getting sicker because they stopped going to see their doctors. Somebody has to pay to offset the price differential in order to keep the health care system propped up. That would be you. Ask your provider.
Even better — ask your Congress member. And get them to explain how the resolution that reopened the government is temporary, so another impasse is likely, another shutdown, possibly in January.
Tell that Congress member to admit that the overarching issue with all of this is the health insurance system wholly needing an overhaul to make premiums realistic again.
It’s enough to make you wonder whether elected officials are taking away necessities just to get people worn down and so focused on survival that they disengage politically. The tiresome antics are wearying, for sure, their fanciful board games, as it were.
Bored games, really.
John McCann is a communications and campaigns strategist for Advance Carolina.
Hence then, the article about politicians shuffle restack deck games go on was published today ( ) and is available on NC news line ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Politicians shuffle, restack deck, games go on )
Also on site :
- GCE Global Solutions Corp. Announces Strategic Acquisition of GCE Payroll Advisers Inc. to Strengthen Global EOR and Payroll Platform
- Trump Wants To”Unleash Hell” In 2026; POTUS Tries To Go Full Maximus With A Misguided ‘Gladiator’ Flex
- Parents of Campbell Hall student killed in the school’s parking lot file wrongful death suit