Remarkably, yes. And health care coverage for more than 20 million Americans is at stake.

The Affordable Care Act has been a work in progress since Congress passed it, with no Republican votes, in 2010. Congress has repealed some parts of the original law and modified others. In general, that has made a complex piece of legislation more effective—and more popular.

Around 45 million Americans now get coverage through the ACA, which helped lower the uninsured rate from nearly 18% in 2010 to less than 10% now. Public approval of the ACA now hovers around 65%, up sharply from the low of 33% in 2013, right before most of the major provisions went into effect.

One big change occurred in 2021, when Democrats who controlled Congress and the White House passed new subsidies to help more people pay the premiums for insurance they buy through an ACA marketplace. Lowering costs drew record numbers of people into the ACA, making the program more integral than ever to the nation’s overall health care system.

Those subsidies are due to expire at the end of this year, and there’s now a big legislative fight underway over whether to kill or extend them. Democrats unanimously want to keep them going. Republicans have generally opposed every part of the ACA, and seem inclined to let the subsidies lapse. But that now puts them in opposition to a program Americans have grown to like and rely on.

If the subsidies expire, the cost of monthly premiums would jump for most of the 24 million people who buy insurance through an ACA marketplace. The average increase would be around $1,000 per year, according to KFF.

The burden would be heavier on workers in certain income pockets. A four-person family earning $90,000 per year would have to pay $3,735 more. An individual with a $35,000 income would have to pay $1,582 more. For some people, the cost of insurance would become prohibitive, and they’d have to go without. (The expiration of the subsidies wouldn’t affect the 20 million or so who get ACA coverage through Medicaid, who are generally the poorest enrollees.)

The ACA has helped a lot of people and is pretty popular. It’s also bipartisan, at least on the receiving end: About 57% of the enrollees live in Republican districts. The federal cost of the subsidies is around $130 billion per year, but that’s a fraction of the cost of the tax cut bill Congress passed over the summer.

So what’s the problem? Why doesn’t Congress just keep the enhanced subsidies going?

The basic problem is that Congressional Republicans have backed themselves into an ideological trap. Since Republicans have stood against the ACA from the beginning, there’s political inertia to stand against it forever. Supporting a huge program passed by Democrats and signed into law by a Democratic president would be an unpardonable sin for many Republicans—even if the program benefits their own constituents.

Ironies abound. Some parts of the ACA are similar to Republican health reform proposals from the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, the GOP was more moderate and there was serious interest among some of them in fixing a health care system that left many people uncovered. The party is now more strident and combative, with leaders focused more on wrecking the Democratic brand (pretty easy, TBH) than solving real problems.

Since a Democratic Congress passed the ACA in 2010, the main GOP health care plan has been to simply kill the Democratic plan. President Trump famously pushed “repeal and replace” during his first presidential term, in 2017. But there was no cogent replacement plan, and Republicans fell a few votes shy of killing the ACA. They were the dog that caught the car and didn’t know what to do next.

Republicans caught the car again this year. Control of Congress and the White House gives Republicans all the votes they need to let the enhanced subsidies expire, bump a couple million people out of the program and come up with some kind of alternative. Yet with just a handful of working days left in Congress this year, Republicans still don’t seem to know what to do.

There are three basic things that could happen. Republicans could give in and agree to hold a vote on extending the subsidies as they are, for a year or two or three. It would probably pass, given that all Democrats and some Republicans would likely vote for it.

Trump actually suggested recently that he might sign such a bill. But there was immediate backlash from stalwart conservatives appalled that Republicans would ever vote for a Democratic priority. You can’t lose face like that on today’s political battlefield.

Republicans could come up with a different type of subsidy they can claim as their own, even if it works like the measures they’re replacing. But no such plan has gelled and there may not be enough time to gin one up by the end of the year. They’d also run the risk of messing with people’s insurance late in the enrollment period and catching the blame for whatever horror stories might result.

There’s also a very real chance the subsidies just expire, and insurance costs rise for those 20 million Americans. That might seem foolish at a time when Trump’s approval rating is tumbling and voters are clamoring for help with the high cost of everything. But in a way, that outcome might be pre-ordained by 15 years of Republican insistence that everything about Obamacare is bad.

Democrats say that if the ACA subsidies expire, they’ll refuse to vote for temporary spending bills that run out at the end of January, which would mean another government shutdown. Could it really get that bad? Yes, it could.

It could end up better than that, too. But a few Republicans would have to demonstrate the courage to change their minds and get behind something millions of Americans want, and need. Oh, the suspense.

IS IT JUST A COINCIDENCE?!!

A better question might be, should anybody really care that she’s leaving? MTG, as she’s known, is only one of 435 members of the House of Representatives, and one of 219 Republicans. At least 40 other members of the House have said they’re planning to leave Congress, and most people don’t even know who they are.

What’s so special about Greene? A few things:

1. She’s been a MAGA stalwart since joining Congress in 2021 but has since broken with Trump on a few key issues. The biggest split is on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. She pushed hard for release of the Epstein files when Trump was still opposed. She also wants Congress to pass health care subsidies Democrats have been fighting for, which most Republicans are against.

2. Her defection from Trump might signal that Trump is losing support among Republicans as his approval rating slips. With thin majorities, Republicans in the House and Senate need almost every vote to pass partisan legislation.

3. A split among Republicans could endanger Trump’s 2026 agenda. Republicans want to pass another tax cut bill in 2026, which might include Trump’s plan for a $2,000 tariff dividend check for most Americans. Some key appointments will also need Senate confirmation, including the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Trump’s support from Republicans in 2025 was rock solid, but it wouldn’t take much dissension to throw the party into gridlock.

4. Greene’s departure also foretells deep GOP worries about a bloodbath in the 2026 midterm elections. Greene herself said recently that “Republicans [will] likely lose the midterms.” She may be getting out early to avoid being on the losing team. Greene’s seat is in a safe Republican district, but if more Republicans in competitive districts follow her lead and split, a 2026 Republican wipeout could become self-fulfilling.

5. Greene has become something of a born-again populist, ranting in her resignation announcement about the high cost of groceries, housing, education and health care. This type of affordability message worked for Democrats in a handful of 2025 elections, and she sounds like a politician running for something, even as she leaves Congress.

6. The speculation now is that Greene, who’s 51, is teeing up a 2028 presidential run or some other move to claim a piece of Trump’s MAGA universe as her own. She has a book coming out, an obligatory step for any brand-building celebrity. She’s already famous, and also unpopular. Greene’s baggage includes claims about Jewish space lasers, mass-murder conspiracy theories and other fringe ideas. She’s a walking spectacle. That’s why political journalists are salivating.

Expect Greene to remain a loud and divisive public character. Her talent for saying outrageous things would make her an ideal pundit on right-wing media. If she becomes a serious presidential contender, you’ll surely know.

As a presidential candidate in 2024, Donald Trump said that if elected, he’d release all the files the federal government has on Epstein, presumably revealing everything there is to know. But after he took office in January, Trump blocked the release of those files and said the whole thing is a hoax.

Now, Trump has suddenly changed his mind and blessed the new Congressional measure requiring the Justice Dept. to release the so-called Epstein files. This comes after some of the documentation dribbled out, via Congress. Those selective tidbits undercut Trump’s claim that he scarcely knew Epstein. They also suggest Trump might be complicit in … something.

Here’s your Short Guide to the whole lurid affair:

¶ There’s never been a full accounting of everybody who may have participated in Epstein’s criminal sexual abuse of underage teenage girls. Epstein knew many famous and powerful people and it’s possible some of them committed criminal acts that victimized the underage girls, just as Epstein did.

¶ Despite many denials by Trump, newly released emails and other evidence make it clear that Trump knew Epstein and was friendly with him for years. Trump once said Epstein liked women “on the younger side,” which suggests Trump may have known Epstein was sexually abusing underage teenagers and committing crimes.

¶ The most explosive question is whether Trump himself ever abused any of the underage girls Epstein seems to have provided as sexual playthings for some of his rich friends. There’s no clear evidence that Trump did. But one newly released Epstein email from 2011 says Trump “spent hours” with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, at some point in the past when Giuffre would have been a minor. Was Trump alone with her? The email doesn’t say. Was there any kind of sexual act? Also doesn’t say.

¶ Giuffre committed suicide in April, at the age of 41. She wrote a memoir, published posthumously, and spoke publicly about Epstein, starting in 2011. The most salacious thing she ever said about Trump is this: “He didn’t partake in any sex with any of us but he flirted with me.”

¶ There’s another murky case involving a woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson who filed a federal lawsuit in 2016 claiming that Trump and Epstein both raped her in 1994 at Epstein’s Manhattan home, when she was 13. She dropped that suit shortly after she filed it in 2016, without explanation, after Trump unexpectedly won the presidential election.

¶ If Trump has nothing to hide, as he claims, why is he so flustered by the Epstein files? That’s what nobody understands. In that same 2011 email, Epstein wrote that the “dog that hasn’t barked is trump.” That was five years before Trump was first elected president. What did Epstein mean?

¶ Even with the new Congressional mandate, there are still major limits on what the Justice Dept. can release. And Attorney General Pan Bondi has wiggle room. DOJ is supposed to furnish the Epstein documents by December 19. But that will hardly be a complete dump. It’s illegal to release protected material such as grand jury information, for instance. DOJ has to protect details about victims and people investigated but never prosecuted. Bondi can also cite ongoing federal investigations as a reason to withhold information. There will be tons of redactions that could raise suspicions even more.

¶ If you’re wondering if all of this new disclosure stuff is political theater—good instinct. Trump probably flipped from no to yes on the Epstein disclosure because he knew Congress was going to vote for it anyway, and he didn’t want to be on the losing side. The vote in Congress was unanimous (minus one) because nobody wants to vote for more secrecy on a toxic issue. But Trump’s Republican allies in Congress also know they can have it both ways, by voting for full disclosure knowing there are built-in limits on what DOJ can release.

¶ Is there a better way to handle this disgusting mess? Ben Wittes of Lawfare argues that the best approach would be for the House and/or Senate to conduct bipartisan investigations meant to establish a definitive account of the Epstein mess, including Trump’s involvement. That won’t happen with Republicans in control of both chambers. Motivations could change if Dems win either house in the next year’s midterms. Realistically, only a split Congress could produce a relatively unbiased assessment.

¶ To spell out the political subplot: Congressional Republicans voted to release the Epstein files because many of their constituents think there’s a huge coverup. It’s the first major breach between Trump and his fellow Republicans since Trump took office in January. Democrats are going along with full disclosure simply because it could damage Trump and it doesn’t matter any more if Bill Clinton or Larry Summers or other old Democrats who have been mentioned in the Epstein files take a hit.

¶ Will we ever know the full truth? Nope. Those limits on Justice Dept. disclosure mean there will always be some secret Epstein files, which is more than it takes to fuel the types of conspiracy theories the Epstein scandal has hatched.

¶ Bottom line for ordinary people: If you want to be outraged about Epstein forever, there will be nothing to stop you. But you’d be wise to stop yourself.

Acknowledgement: This Short Guide isn’t exactly short. But Epstein is a bedeviling topic and I aimed for a high meaning-to-word ratio. Feedback always welcome.