As the government shutdown stretches into its third week, Republicans have signaled some willingness to agree to Democrats’ demand to extend billions of dollars in enhanced premium subsidies for exchange plans beyond their scheduled expiration at the end of this year.

That would be a mistake. The enhanced insurance subsidies were always intended as a short-term fix to the surge in premiums that Obamacare — a law Democrats enacted on an entirely partisan basis — created.

The GOP must not give in to Democrats’ demand that they bail out Obamacare.

When Democrats created these enhanced premium subsidies back in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, they portrayed them as a pandemic-era emergency that would be in place for just two years.

The enhanced subsidies ratcheted down the sh

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