A Government-Created Health Insurance Crisis Coming for Louisiana Families

How federal overreach set up hundreds of thousands of Louisiana residents for a financial disaster

Louisiana families who trusted the federal government's promise of "affordable" healthcare are about to learn a painful lesson about what happens when Washington makes commitments it can't keep and has no constitutional authority to make in the first place.

Starting in 2026, Louisiana residents buying health insurance through the government's ACA marketplace will face the largest premium increases in more than five years — an average of 15% across the board. But that's just the beginning of their problems. Enhanced federal subsidies that have been masking the true cost of these government-managed plans are set to disappear completely on December 31, 2025.

The numbers tell a sobering story. Families currently paying about $107 monthly could see that jump to $400 or more. A typical Louisiana family of four earning $85,000 annually will pay an extra $313 per month just from losing subsidies, before the premium increases even take effect. A 45-year-old making $25,000 will see monthly payments rocket from $160 to over $1,000.

This crisis exists because the federal government inserted itself into a market where it never belonged, created artificial dependency through unsustainable spending, and is now leaving families to deal with the wreckage.

The Scope of Government-Created Dependency

The scale of Louisiana's vulnerability reveals the depth of this government-manufactured problem. Since 2020, enrollment in Louisiana's ACA marketplace has exploded by 234%, making it one of the fastest-growing states for government-managed health insurance. Hundreds of thousands of Louisiana families got lured into these plans with promises of affordability that required massive taxpayer subsidies to maintain.

Currently, 96% of Louisiana enrollees receive federal subsidies averaging $666 monthly. That's nearly $700 per family per month that taxpayers across America are paying to artificially reduce insurance premiums for Louisiana residents. This level of dependency was never sustainable, and now that the spending spree is ending, families will discover what these plans actually cost without government interference.

The enhanced subsidies that started in 2021 were marketed as temporary pandemic relief. But like every government program, temporary became permanent in the minds of beneficiaries, even though the fiscal reality made continuation impossible. Now ending these subsidies creates exactly the kind of crisis that government intervention always produces: artificial dependency followed by painful withdrawal.

Constitutional Overreach Comes Home to Roost

This entire debacle illustrates why our founders designed a system of limited government with enumerated powers. The federal government has no constitutional authority to operate health insurance marketplaces. It has no business using taxpayer money to subsidize private insurance purchases. And it certainly shouldn't be picking winners and losers in healthcare markets.

Yet that's exactly what happened. Congress created this massive federal program, convinced families to depend on it, and now reality is setting in. The government distorted natural market forces, created artificial pricing through subsidies, and built a system that could only survive through continuous taxpayer bailouts.

Show me where in the Constitution it grants Congress the power to run health insurance exchanges. You can't, because that authority doesn't exist. This is textbook federal overreach — government exceeding its legitimate boundaries and creating problems it then claims only more government can solve.

How Government Intervention Made Everything Worse

If the federal government had never inserted itself into healthcare markets, Louisiana families wouldn't face this crisis. They wouldn't have been enticed into insurance plans they couldn't actually afford without subsidies. They wouldn't be trapped in a system where artificial government pricing obscures real costs until the subsidies disappear.

A free market would have driven down costs through genuine competition. Insurance companies would compete on price and service quality rather than gaming government subsidy formulas. Consumers would make informed decisions based on actual costs rather than artificially reduced government prices.

Instead, we got a government-managed marketplace where five insurance companies — Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, CHRISTUS Health Plan, Ambetter, UnitedHealthcare, and HMO Louisiana — compete in a distorted environment. They know the government subsidizes their customers, so there's no real pressure to control costs or innovate.

Meanwhile, underlying healthcare costs keep rising at 8% annually. Insurance companies are building in additional costs for potential tariffs on medical equipment. The whole system is designed to obscure real expenses while expanding government control over personal healthcare decisions.

The Human Cost of Government Promises

The hardest part of this situation is that real Louisiana families will suffer real consequences. I won't pretend otherwise. When government creates dependency and then removes support, people get hurt.

Lower-income families receiving the largest subsidies will face impossible choices: drop coverage entirely, switch to high-deductible plans that provide minimal protection, or spend money they don't have on premiums. Small business owners and self-employed workers — the entrepreneurial backbone of Louisiana's economy — must choose between health benefits and business survival.

Middle-class families who became newly eligible for subsidies under the enhanced system may lose all federal assistance and find themselves completely priced out of comprehensive coverage.

This human cost is tragic, but it's also predictable. It's what always happens when government creates unsustainable programs that exceed constitutional boundaries. The dependency becomes real, but the government's ability to maintain artificial support eventually hits fiscal and political limits.

Why This Proves Government Healthcare Fails

Louisiana's impending premium crisis perfectly demonstrates why government involvement in healthcare markets makes everything worse, not better. The ACA was sold as a solution to healthcare affordability and access problems. Instead, it created new problems while failing to solve the original ones.

Healthcare costs have continued rising faster than inflation. Insurance has become more complex and restrictive. Many doctors stopped accepting certain plans. Emergency room visits increased rather than decreased. And now families face premium shock when artificial subsidies end.

A genuine free market approach would focus on increasing competition, requiring price transparency, reforming regulations that restrict consumer choice, and eliminating barriers that prevent insurance sales across state lines. Instead, we got more government control disguised as market-based reform.

The Broader Lesson

This crisis extends far beyond health insurance. It's a perfect case study in why the Constitution limits federal power and why those limits matter. When government exceeds its proper role, it creates artificial dependencies, distorts markets, and inevitably disappoints the people it claims to help.

Louisiana families trusted the government's promise of affordable healthcare. That trust is about to be broken through no fault of their own. They were told they could have comprehensive health insurance for essentially nothing, with taxpayers picking up the tab indefinitely.

But there's no such thing as a free lunch, and eventually someone has to pay the bill. In this case, it's Louisiana families who will pay through dramatically higher premiums, while taxpayers nationwide have already paid through billions in subsidies that produced temporary affordability rather than sustainable solutions.

Looking Forward

Louisiana residents facing this premium crisis need to prepare for open enrollment starting November 1, 2025, with full knowledge that their costs will increase substantially. The original ACA subsidies will continue for some families, but at much lower levels than the enhanced version ending this year.

Congress could extend enhanced subsidies, but that would just throw more taxpayer money at a fundamentally broken system while delaying the inevitable reckoning. Recent budget legislation chose not to extend these subsidies, and we can't afford to subsidize unsustainable government programs indefinitely.

The real solution requires getting government out of healthcare markets and allowing genuine competition to drive down costs. That means eliminating barriers to interstate insurance sales, requiring price transparency from providers, reforming medical malpractice laws, and ending government interference in healthcare decisions.

We're not there yet, and Louisiana families will pay the price for past government overreach in the meantime. But this crisis should serve as a clear reminder of why limited constitutional government matters and why we should be deeply skeptical of future promises from politicians who want to expand federal control over our personal lives.

The founders understood that government power, once granted, is rarely returned voluntarily. Louisiana's health insurance crisis proves they were right.