The Government Shutdown Toolkit

Because anti-worker extremists failed to extend premium tax credits for people who get their insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, health insurance premiums for 22 million people will double – increasing by more than 114%, on average.  

For families on a tight budget or retirees on a fixed income, these premium increases could mean the difference between seeing a doctor when you’re sick or making rent. This is especially true for older people. Insurance companies can charge them as much as three times more than younger people. Nationwide, nearly 5 million families are expected to become uninsured because of anti-worker extremists’ cruelty.   

Failure to extend these tax credits will have ripple effects throughout the economy: 

• Everyone will see their health insurance premiums rise – even if they don’t get insurance through the ACA marketplace – as hospitals and other health care facilities struggle to cover the increased costs of uncompensated care. 

• Health care funding helps to stimulate the economy. Without that funding, nearly 340,000 jobs are expected to disappear in health care and other industries as economic activity decreases.  

• Additionally, states, cities and towns are projected to lose more than $2.5 billion in revenue. This will hurt their ability to fund the essential services that AFSCME members provide not just in health care, but across all sectors. 

• Hospital closures and cutbacks, especially in rural areas, have already begun. If Congress doesn’t act urgently, it will mean furloughs and layoffs for AFSCME members who work in health care. It will harm the patients we serve and make our communities sicker.  

Congress could have extended health care support for working families and retirees earlier this year. Instead, it prioritized making deeper tax cuts for greedy corporations and billionaires.

Tell Congress to stop playing games with our health and jobs: lower health care costs. 

If anti-worker extremists and billionaires get their way, they will cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid. This means millions of low-income workers, children, senior citizens and people with disabilities will lose their health care, all to give billionaires massive tax breaks. 

Medicaid is the largest source of federal funding for state budgets, making up 56% of total federal funding to states. 

Medicaid dollars help keep the doors open at hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, state veterans’ homes, substance use disorder treatment centers, and other health care providers. Without that funding, they could be forced to close, and communities will lose jobs and dollars that help sustain local economies. 

If federal Medicaid dollars dry up, states, cities and towns will have no choice but to slash budgets and jobs for a broad range of public services.  

Working families would pay more out of pocket for care and workers will miss more workdays due to untreated illnesses. Even people with the best insurance will wait longer, pay more, and have fewer health care choices, especially when some hospitals start closing. 

Medicaid work requirements and block grants (giving states a fixed sum of money, instead of paying them based on what it costs to provide care) are really Medicaid cuts in disguise. 

Despite the rhetoric, most Medicaid enrollees work full- or part-time. Those who don’t either have disabilities, care for family members or attend school. These policies shift costs onto states and increase the number of uninsured people, leading to hospitals seeing more ER visits and providing more care they don’t get paid for. 

You don’t have to be on Medicaid to need Medicaid. When it’s under attack, we all have something to lose. 

Share this flyer with your co-workers and networks who want to learn more. 

Elon Musk and his billionaire bullies are attempting to dismantle Social Security. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have illegally accessed Americans’ sensitive personal Social Security data. Thanks to AFSCME’s lawsuit, a judge has ordered DOGE to delete all data they gained, but they’re still undermining Social Security in other ways. 

They’re implementing serious cuts to services: 

• Laying off thousands of Social Security Administration employees 

• Closing offices in local communities 

• Ending paper checks 

• Cutting telephone services 

• Declaring living people dead 

This is harming Americans’ ability to receive Social Security checks that they’ve earned for themselves and their families. 

Elon Musk has called Social Security “a Ponzi scheme” and billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said only fraudsters would care if they didn’t get their Social Security checks.  

It’s not hard to see what their game is — billionaires are purposefully undermining Social Security and spreading lies so they can claim it’s broken and justify further cuts. 

The truth is Social Security is one of the most efficient government agencies. Working people and retirees have paid into the program their whole careers, and it belongs to us.