Dr. LaKeshia N. Myers
By LaKeshia N. Myers
As federal workers miss their paychecks and families wonder how they’ll feed their children this week, we must ask ourselves: How did we arrive at this moment? The government shutdown—now in its third week—centers on a dispute that should shame us all. While lawmakers bicker over healthcare subsidies in Washington, D.C., millions of Americans face an impossible choice between medical care and putting food on the table.
The crisis we face today didn’t appear overnight. It was accelerated with the passage of Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” this past July, a piece of legislation that historians may one day record as the largest rollback of healthcare support in American history. The bill slashed over $1 trillion from health programs, threatening to strip insurance coverage from nearly 11 million people. It imposes work requirements on Medicaid recipients, cut critical Medicare services, and refused to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits that help millions of working families afford coverage.
Now, as families across Wisconsin and the nation prepare for open enrollment, they’re discovering that their monthly health insurance premiums have skyrocketed. For some, the increase means several hundred dollars more each month—money that must come from somewhere. Will it be the grocery budget? The rent? A child’s college fund? These are the devastating choices that working Americans are being forced to make while the wealthy enjoy tax cuts that dwarf the savings from healthcare cuts.
This is not just a political crisis. It is a moral crisis that reveals the growing chasm between America’s wealthy elite and everyone else. The wealth gap in our nation continues to widen at an alarming pace, and healthcare has become the clearest symbol of this inequality. Those with means can afford the best care in the world. Those without are left to navigate a byzantine system that seems designed to exclude them.
Consider how other developed nations approach healthcare. England’s National Health Service provides comprehensive care to all residents, funded through taxation and free at the point of service. The United Arab Emirates offers universal healthcare coverage to all citizens and residents, recognizing that a healthy population is fundamental to national prosperity. These countries understand what we seem to have forgotten: healthcare is not a luxury good to be purchased by those who can afford it. It is a basic human right.
The United States stands virtually alone among prosperous nations in treating healthcare as a commodity rather than a right. We spend more on healthcare than any other country, yet our outcomes lag behind. We have world-class hospitals and brilliant doctors, but millions of our citizens avoid seeking care because they fear the cost. Parents ration insulin for their diabetic children. Cancer patients skip treatments because they cannot afford the copays. Seniors choose between prescription medications and groceries.
The Affordable Care Act, championed by former President Obama and passed in 2010, was meant to begin addressing these inequities. It expanded coverage to millions, protected people with pre-existing conditions, and allowed young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance. But as we’ve seen in recent months, the ACA was just the tip of the iceberg—a starting point, not a destination. What we need is a fundamental reexamination of how we deliver and finance healthcare in America.
The current shutdown—with lawmakers deadlocked over whether to extend healthcare subsidies—demonstrates that we have not yet embraced the truth that other nations have accepted. Healthcare cannot be subject to the whims of partisan politics. It cannot be a bargaining chip in budget negotiations. It cannot be something that people lose access to because Congress failed to reach an agreement.
As this shutdown drags on, federal workers go without pay, food assistance programs teeter on the edge of collapse, and uncertainty spreads through communities across America. But the real crisis isn’t just the shutdown itself—it’s the system that made this shutdown possible. It’s a system that treats healthcare as optional rather than essential, that prioritizes tax cuts for corporations over coverage for children, that asks working families to sacrifice while protecting the wealth of the few.
We must demand better. We must demand a healthcare system that recognizes the dignity and worth of every person. We must demand that our representatives in Washington stop playing political games with people’s lives. And we must work toward a future where no American family chooses between staying healthy and staying housed.
The shutdown will eventually end. It always does. But the underlying crisis will remain until we find the political will to address it. Healthcare is a human right. It’s time we started acting like it.