Congressional Democrats claim their refusal to end the government shutdown unless President Donald Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans agree to make permanent Obamacare’s temporary COVID-related tax credits is intended to protect the health care coverage of millions of low and middle-income Americans.

But an analysis by The Washington Stand of campaign contributions data compiled by OpenSecrets.org suggests such solid-wall support for the shutdown also shields a health care insurance industry that gives hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Democratic incumbents, challengers, committees, and PACs.

The temporary COVID-related tax credits are hugely important sources of revenues for many of the largest health care insurers that are active in the Obamacare segment, according to Economic Policy Innovation Center Researcher Gudai Bulgac. And the tax credits are significant incentives for fraudulent enrollment.

“The Biden COVID Credits are paid directly to health insurance companies from the U.S. Treasury. Since the funds do not go to individuals, millions of people have been fraudulently enrolled and often do not even know that they have been signed up. About 40 percent of people who are fully subsidized by Biden’s COVID Credits did not make a single claim for a medical procedure or medication in 2024,” Bulgac reported earlier this month.

“This allows the insurance companies to collect thousands of dollars in credits from the government per enrollee while incurring little to no cost. An estimated $27 billion in these improper payments to insurance companies were made in 2025 alone as many insurance companies jumped to take advantage of these credits,” Bulgac continued.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), for example, is viewed as the Democrats’ chief shutdown strategist. The New York Democrat’s Impact leadership PAC received $271,284 in contributions from Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group and the St. Louis-based Centene, two of the 10 biggest health care insurance firms that depend on Obamacare for significant portions of their annual revenue.

The Schumer PAC received an additional $78,024 from Indianapolis-based Elevance, which was formerly known as Anthem, as well as $49,024 from Rhode Island-based CVS Health. That brings the Schumer PAC’s total haul for the period 2019 to 2024 to $398,332. Each of these four firms are among the 10 biggest health care insurance firms in the Obamacare universe, as ranked by Venteur.

UnitedHealth Group is the biggest health care insurance firm in Obamacare, and its political contributions to Democrats far exceed those to Republicans. In the 2024 election cycle, $988,411, or nearly 59% of all the firm’s donations went to Democrats.

Centene gave $38.88 million to Democratic Senate contenders during the 2018-2024 period, compared to $19.16 million to GOP Senate candidates. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was the recipient of Centene’s biggest individual contribution, at $225,262 out of a total of $634,223 to six Democrats during the 2024 campaign cycle. The Centene total to the four GOP recipients in the firm’s top 10 came to $348,478, slightly more than half the Democrat total.

Bulgac explains another key factor in Centene’s significance in the behind-the-scenes shutdown influences.

“Centene is the largest Obamacare insurer by market share,” he noted. “Their Obamacare membership nearly doubled from 3.3 million enrollees in 2023 to 5.9 million in 2025. This comprises 21 percent of their total membership of 28 million, with their Medicaid membership making up an additional 12.8 million enrollees. In their 2024 10-K filing for their investors, Centene stated that ‘[r]evenues from CMS are significant to the Marketplace segment.’ In other words, Centene is heavily reliant on payments from the federal government to sustain their business.”

Molina, which ranks ninth in the top 10 of Obamacare insurers, further illustrates the importance of the temporary COVID-related subsidies, Bulgac writes. “Molina also noted in their 10-K that they ‘expect [their] Marketplace enrollment to increase by almost 50 percent in 2025, to a total of 580,000 members by the end of the year … This would represent an estimated Marketplace premium revenue increase of approximately 60 percent in 2025, while continuing to maintain [their] target margins.’”

A more balanced picture is seen with CVS Health political contributions. Republican recipients during the 2024 cycle, led by the Congressional Leadership Fund’s $575,000, received $832,805, while Democrats got $551,352. Among Senate candidates, Democrats in the 2024 cycle received $18.99 million, while Republicans got $28.53 million from CVS Health.

Curiously in the context of the intense partisan deadlock between Senate Republicans and Democrats that occasioned the present shutdown, the excessive influence of health care insurance firms on American politics is a bipartisan concern, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Of the eight groups and institutions we asked about in this survey — such as Congress, the general public and federal courts — health insurance companies are the one that a majority of Americans agree has too much sway in health policy. Just 9 percent say they have about the right amount of influence, and an equal share say they don’t have enough,” Pew reported in a July 10 survey analysis.

“Although politics and health policy are often deeply entangled, this dim opinion of health insurance companies’ influence is an area of notable partisan agreement. Roughly equal shares of Democrats (including those who lean to the Democratic Party) and Republicans (and GOP leaners) express this view. Similar shares of Democrats and Republicans also say Congress has too much influence on health policy, although this view is less widely held than it is for health insurance companies,” Pew said.

Among Republicans, 71% said health care insurers have too much influence of federal health policy, while 69% of Democrats said the same thing.

It is important to understand that the Obamacare temporary subsidies that Democrats backed in 2021 and now demand be made permanent were effective in expanding enrollment by lower and middle-income families because the government made premiums artificially cheap.

“Since enhanced subsidies began in 2021, the market enrollment has grown tremendously, rising from 11 million people in 2020 to 25 million today. Again, Democrats and Republicans interpret this growth in opposite ways. Democrats see it as a sign of success, whereas Republicans are concerned about waste and over-use,” states Mark Shepherd, Harvard Kennedy School associate professor of public policy.

In other words, more customers paying the government subsidized premiums keeps more revenue flowing into the health care insurers’ coffers, while terminating those subsidies could dramatically reduce such revenues for the companies.