From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.

I don't really pray much, but I pray at night that something happened, that I wake up in the morning and I check the news and that the subsidy was exempt, something that will make it not $55,000 next year, something.

This week, despite a last-ditch effort by some House Republicans to strike a deal on health care,

Capitol Hill remains deadlocked on whether to extend support for millions of Americans

who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act.

Without the subsidies, it would be the minimum of $1,500 a month, and it wasn't no way.

My original estimate was about a 1,200% increase.

I think I was in tears the entire rest of the week after I got that news.

That's left those Americans to confront a wrenching decision.

I asked my husband, like, what should we do?

He's like, maybe we go without health insurance.

And I was like, oh, my God, no way.

Keep paying for rising insurance costs or risk going without it.

That's been a really tough couple of months.

A lot of just like mentally preparing for what this next year is going to look like.

And it's pretty grim.

Today, my colleague Marco Sanger-Katz explains who will be most affected

and how this could all change the political landscape heading into the midterms.

It's Thursday, December 18th.

Margo, welcome back to the Daily. Thank you so much.

It really feels like health care and debates over health insurance have been in the news like every other day almost. And in large part, that's because there have been these really huge and ongoing and changing debates on Capitol Hill. But it really feels like this week in particular, we have reached an inflection point,

which is why we wanted to have you on the show. The last time we had you on, it was in the thick of the shutdown fight. And we're bringing you back here so that you can bring us up to speed on

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