The Republican-controlled Senate’s vote to block the extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) funds has set a ticking clock on a plan for health care that seems all but impossible, and morally detrimental, to the coalition of faith leaders condemning the move.
Following a Dec. 11 hearing, in which two separate bills to address the expiring COVID-era subsidies failed in the Senate, the Rev. Dr. William Barber envisioned a health system of skyrocketing insurance premiums, hundreds of hospital closures, and millions of Americans to forgo access to health care in 2026.
“People will literally die,” Barber, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, told The Informer. “This is not just people losing their subsidies. And to end [ACA funds] so they can give tax cuts to the greedy…when in fact we should be talking about universal health care, is one of the great moral failings of this nation.”
With Congress set to depart for holiday break this week, the partisan stalemate on health care affordability seems to reflect Oct. 1, when the issue of enhanced tax credits served as the crux of a 43-day federal government shutdown— the longest in history.
House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, shelved amendments to extend expiring health subsidies in a heated House Rules Committee meeting on Tuesday. The move was one of several last-ditch bipartisan efforts to prevent the likelihood of premium costs skyrocketing and some 22 million Americans’ health insurance expiring at the end of the month.
In response, some moderate GOP leaders are backing a pair of bipartisan discharge petitions from Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) to compel Johnson to vote on their health-care bills extending the credits with other reforms.
If successful, Fitzpatrick’s amendment would prolong the subsidies two years.
“I think the only thing worse than a clean extension without any income limits and any reforms— because it’s not a perfect system— the only thing worse than that would be expiration,” Fitzpatrick said on Tuesday.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has yet to throw his support behind either of the bipartisan options, instead opting to push his own discharge petition that has earned the signatures of all 214 House Democrats, and would force a vote on a three-year extension with no changes.
As of Wednesday morning, only four Republicans need to break ranks and sign his petition.
“Our message is simple,” said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), chair of the centrist New Democrats. “Republicans have created a health care crisis for American families who are seeing their health insurance rise by 100% to 300%, and the solution has been in front of us for a while.”
Given the fact that the Senate blocked the Democratic plan in a 51-48 vote last Thursday, if passed by the House, it is unknown whether the bill would readily advance through the upper chamber.
Faith Leaders Weigh In on ‘The Biggest Gamble the District Has Ever Had’
Coupled with the impact of the Republican and President Donald Trump-led One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), Barber, founder of the Morals Monday Movement likened the state of health equity to a national moral crisis that began with the legislation’s passing in July.
“We’re not talking about people not receiving health care— we’re talking about them losing health care that they had access to,” Barber explained. “On top of the 87 million people who are already underinsured right now, on top of 800 people dying from poverty every day. This legislation is deadly and it’s destructive.”
The dire effects of the controversial law, set to implement in full next year, include: deadly cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other life-saving programs; a whopping $1 million loss in health care spending; drastic changes to eligibility and benefits for critical patient services; and a launchpad to the monthslong gridlock on enhanced tax credits that make health insurance coverage affordable.
For Barber, it’s not a political argument, but rather a matter of life and death.
“When we ignore in our public policy things like poverty, health care, systemic racism, it’s not just merely a partisan issue,” said the founder of the Moral Mondays Movement. “This bill… could cause 51,000 preventable deaths. That’s what’s at stake in 2026.”
Addressing the future of health care affordability in the District, the Rev. Anthony Evans – president of the D.C.-based National Black Church Initiative (NBCI)– did not mince his words on what’s at stake nor who’s to blame.
“Instead of the District ensuring its citizens have an economic delivery health care system for its citizens, they took a gamble on economic development with the [forthcoming Washington Commanders stadium],” he told The Informer. “And given the fact that the [OBBB] is cutting rural hospitals and kicking 10 million people [off health insurance], there is no way that there’s going to be a safety net for health equity and access to care in the future. The District is a done deal.”
The faith leader pointed to the fact that local officials had the means and opportunity to get ahead of the health strain by establishing a reputable city hospital some 20 years ago, before the regional debacle eventually fruitified with the opening of Ward 8’s Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center earlier this year.
In addition to expanding patient care much sooner, some of the benefits of federal and state subsidies, private insurance, and building a platform with multiple streams of revenue, could have fared well against modern threats to affordable health care.
For the reportedly more than 682,000 people in the DMV and West Virginia supported through the ACA exchange, he notes the realities of a dysfunctional economic model that prioritizes real estate and development over the functionality of its most vulnerable populations – including low-income and communities of color.
“In other words, they don’t have the economic structure to serve its own citizens,” Evans said candidly. “If Trump just gave the District a billion dollars for health care, that would not help them – largely because the District has the inability of planning and having strategy – [but] in addition to that, there’s insufficient data to determine what is the best use…in terms of health care spending. The District does not have a health care delivery structure for the poor.”
With Barber seconding the “ripple effects” of OBBB on the economy, both faith leaders touted a need for an emergency session— across all states— to realign political strategy with the well-being and wealth of the people.
While the bishop works to see the controversial law repealed, Evans emphasizes that Washingtonians in particular would benefit from a transparent method of how tax money from the revitalized RFK stadium site– home to the returning Commanders by 2030– will be divided.
In the meantime, he encourages the Black Church to protect the seniors who have property in the city.
“It’s the biggest gamble the District has ever had,” said the NBCI president. “I don’t know what [they’re] going to do…but we’re in trouble.”
On the other hand, the nation’s capital, and particularly its faith-based communities, is in a unique position to conquer what’s at stake in 2026, according to Barber.
The Yale professor plans to convene 2,000 clergy to Washington, D.C., for a “day of policy analysis” in January, putting truth to power beyond the pulpit to demonstrate the realities of the health care crisis and engage in the “kind of prayer that challenges what’s going on.”
“Imagine if every conscientious pastor, with five people from their congregation that are losing their health care, go in and engage in a massive sit-in and pray-in right in the offices of the senators and house representatives that have chosen to do this,” Barber told The Informer. “[Faith leaders in D.C.] and impacted people must be a part of a massive coalition that refuses to be unseen, that refuses to just accept things the way that they are.”
With thousands of lives and generations of health equity on the line, the faith activist considers turning political negligence into a moral movement for democracy as the best way forward, adding a desire to see all impacted individuals transform into “a powerful voting block” of resistance in next year’s midterm elections.
“No voice should be quiet in this moment. Pulpits have to come alive, people have to come alive,” Barber told The Informer. “This pain must produce power, and people must engage like they have never before.”