Carol Shaw began saving for retirement immediately after finishing her undergraduate degree. For years, she and her husband, Tom, diligently put money away for the day when the York County couple no longer had to work and could spend their days traveling.

However, after Tom left his job at Capital Blue Cross and Carol ended her career as a project manager for a company based in New York City, their life is far from what they imagined. Instead of seeing the world, they are dipping into their retirement savings to pay for health care after congressional Republicans failed to extend expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits that helped millions of Americans pay for insurance, including the Shaws. 

Because Carol and Tom aren’t yet 65 years old, they don’t qualify for Medicare and have to find insurance elsewhere. Last year, they purchased insurance through Pennie, Pennsylvania’s Affordable Care Act marketplace. That zero-deductible plan was $1,095 a month with the enhanced premium tax credit that Congress originally passed in 2021 in order to help Americans struggling during the early days of COVID-19 afford health care.

Then the Shaws received a message from their insurer last year: Their plan would increase from $1,095 to $3,500 a month come 2026, about a 220% jump, after the funding for the ACA tax credits sunsetted at the end of December.

“That was just, like, holy cow,” Carol Shaw said.

“I never, ever, ever thought that we’d be paying this much for health care, never,” she said.

After considering a range of options, including getting rid of Tom’s insurance, they finally landed on a Capital Blue Cross plan through Pennie that costs them about $2,800 a month and has a $7,450 deductible for both of them. Ultimately, they expect they’ll have to pay about $50,000 for health care this year, including their monthly premium, deductibles, doctors’ and emergency room visits, co-pays, and medicine. 

About half a million Pennsylvanians saw their premium costs go up in 2026 after the ACA tax credits expired. One in five Pennie enrollees — or about 85,000 people — have dropped their coverage after the tax credits were allowed to expire and premium costs rose, according to the Pennsylvania Health Insurance Exchange Authority, which operates Pennie. The Pennsylvania Health Access Network estimates that 600,000 Pennsylvanians could lose their health coverage in coming years due to Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the expiration of the ACA tax credits.

Now, the Shaws said, they hope the lawmakers who did not extend the ACA tax credits will face consequences in the November midterms, including their representative, Scott Perry, a Republican who has served in Congress since 2013.

Perry’s seat in the 10th Congressional District, which covers Dauphin County and portions of York and Cumberland counties, is considered one of the most vulnerable in the coming election. Perry is being challenged by Democrat Janelle Stelson, a former newscaster who’s running after losing to him by less than 1 point in 2024. He could also face a Republican primary challenger, Karen Dalton, who would be his first GOP opponent since he first won his congressional seat in 2012. Dalton has cited federal cuts to health care as one of the reasons she wants to challenge Perry.

“I’m hoping he loses, and loses by a large amount,” Carol Shaw said.

It’s not just that they’re angry about their own health insurance, the Shaws explained. They’re upset by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans cutting food assistance, slashing funding for health care, and implementing anti-democratic policies that critics say are meant to amass power and wealth for Trump and his administration. 

“We’re living in an administration where cruelty is the norm,” Tom Shaw said. “It goes way beyond just health care, right? Seeing our country just fall apart and disintegrate really just sucks.”

Perry’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Like talking to a brick wall’

Perry, a staunch supporter of the president, faces dipping approval ratings and criticism of his record.

Defending his vote in January against extending the ACA tax credits, the congressman argued that insurance companies were partially to blame for rising premium costs.

“What we don’t need to be doing is to continue to enrich insurance companies, especially ones that have acted fraudulently, collecting taxpayer money and essentially giving it to people that don’t really need it,” Perry said during a Fox43 interview about the ACA tax credits.

In a Newsweek op-ed signed by Perry and other members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus in September, the group said making the expanded ACA tax credits, which they say “were always meant to be short-term adjustments” during the COVID pandemic, would be a “colossal mistake.”

“The insurance companies are raising the prices and intended to raise the prices before any of this happened regardless,” Perry told Politico in October.

The Shaws, however, say they wouldn’t have faced a 220% increase in their premium if they still had their ACA tax credits.

Asked if they had been able to speak directly with Perry about their soaring health care bills, the Shaws said they’ve written letters and cards but haven’t spoken with him in person. 

“To be honest with you, I feel it’s not worth anything to try to reach out to Perry directly because, one, he’s a pathological liar, and, two, there’s no way in the world that he’s going to do anything to try to help people,” Tom Shaw said. “I focus on more like the [U.S. Sen. John] Fettermans and people who I feel would actually maybe respond to something, but Perry, it’s like talking to a brick wall.”

A history of cutting health care 

Perry is also receiving criticism for his voting record on health-related issues.

He voted to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act, which halved the percentage of uninsured people in Pennsylvania between 2010 and 2025; voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, which capped drug prices and lowered drug costs; co-sponsored a bill that would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act; and in 2020 voted against the No Surprises Act, which aims to protect patients from receiving unexpected bills from out-of-network providers when accessing emergency care. It was enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.

He voted for legislation that benefitted insurance corporations and against bills aimed at expanding health coverage for Pennsylvanians and Americans at large, such as the 2022 PACT Act that expanded health care coverage for veterans exposed to burn pit toxins.

“Congressman Scott Perry is speaking out of both sides of his mouth,” Rachele Fortier, the executive director of Affordable Pennsylvania, said in a statement prepared for the Pennsylvania Independent. “He claims health care tax credits skyrocket costs and benefit insurance companies. Yet his refusal to restore these tax credits has raised Pennie costs by 180% for his constituents — the largest district-wide average premium increase across the Commonwealth. 

“He also voted for historic cuts to Medicaid, which benefits over 180,000 Pennsylvanians in his district, to give tax breaks to big corporations like these insurance companies,” Fortier continued. “These cuts will rip care away from hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, threaten tens of thousands of health care jobs, and put local hospitals at risk of closure. Rep. Perry wants us to believe he’s standing up to special interests and fighting for Pennsylvanians, but the opposite is true — he’s catering to these corporations at the expense of his constituents.”

Between 2012 and 2025, Perry accepted $72,500 in contributions from insurance industry political action committees, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. Between 2018 and 2025, Perry received $132,400 from Ritter Insurance Marketing CEO Craig Ritter and his wife, Heidi Ritter, according to FEC data.

Democratic critics say that funding came as Perry pushed for legislation that benefited the insurance industry.

In 2017, for example, Perry voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was championed by Trump and the GOP and reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act permanently extended the 2017 tax cuts and added new ones. 

The tax cuts ended up benefiting the country’s richest individuals and eroding the country’s revenue base, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The law led to seven of the country’s biggest health care corporations — health insurance companies Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; hospital chains HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and CVS Healthcare — avoiding paying tens of billions of dollars in taxes, according to a 2025 report from progressive advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst.

The Pennsylvania Policy Center in Harrisburg reported in 2025 that Pennsylvania’s billionaires grew $120 billion richer between the end of 2017 and 2025. 

The Shaws said Perry’s record of voting for legislation that makes health care more expensive and inaccessible to more and more people will likely harm Perry in the coming midterms. 

“I’ve seen some of his supporters, now that it’s impacted them and they’re having to pay and they can’t afford to get their medicine, saying, Hey, I can’t believe I backed him,” Carol Shaw said.