This week, the current federal-government shutdown will become the third-longest ever , surpassing a 2013 shutdown that lasted 16 days. There are some significant echoes of the 2013 shutdown, which stemmed from a failed Republican effort to “defund” Obamacare just as that health-reform initiative was being fully implemented. Now the shoe is on the other foot: Democrats are demanding that Obamacare subsidies , which were significantly expanded in 2021, be extended. Without congressional action, upwards of 20 million Americans will see a huge Obamacare premium hike at the end of the year.

The focus on the Obamacare subsidies does create a somewhat simpler path to the end of the shutdown compared to the broader series of disagreements that fed it. Democrats originally demanded a host

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