Published in the Omaha World-Herald.

When I’m in Congress, I will work to bring down health care costs.

Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump want the cost of purchasing health insurance from a private insurance carrier to go up, and are refusing to provide relief to working families.

In short, Republicans have shut down the government so that they can take away health care from millions of Americans.

This all began when Republicans passed a budget bill in July that gutted the ways many of us get healthcare so they could give tax cuts to their billionaire donors.

In our community, 31,000 of our friends and neighbors get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

That’s the insurance you can buy if you don’t get health insurance directly from your employer.

Cuts to the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) are set to kick in on January 1, 2026. Unless Congress takes action, virtually all of those 31,000 Nebraskans will now pay more for health insurance, and for many of them, the price hike just means they will go without insurance.

The average Omaha resident will see their monthly cost double because of Republicans’ cuts.

For some, the price hike would be even steeper. A 60-year-old couple that makes $82,000 per year would see a 311% increase in their monthly bill. Plans on the marketplace are ranked as bronze, silver, gold, or platinum. For a “silver” plan, this couple would have been paying $581 a month this year – but next year they would be forced to pay $2,386 a month.

A family of four, with two parents in their 40s and two kids, that makes $129,800 a year, will end up paying $12,626 more per year in their health insurance premium for their same coverage. That is nearly three times the property tax bill for a $200,000 house.

Overall, it’s estimated that almost 16,000 people in Nebraska’s second congressional district will lose their health insurance because of these price hikes and cuts to Medicaid. It’s not hard to imagine what that means for families here. Cancer patients will go without treatment, parents will be forced to decide if they can afford to take their kid to a doctor, and an accident or illness could leave you with life changing medical debt.

Even if your insurance won’t be impacted by these price hikes, your experience at a hospital could be. When people are priced out of insurance, they are much more likely to land in already busy emergency rooms for things that could have been handled by a primary care doctor. We’ll see rural hospitals close and our system will face even more strain.

Voters here in Nebraska’s second congressional district have an outsized role to play in the fight for affordable health care.

House Republicans have proven that they’ll side with Trump and big corporations over their constituents’ health and wallets. In Congress, I promise to reverse these harmful healthcare cuts and keep fighting for lower costs and better care.