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Wahls, Turek blast Hinson on health care, food aid in Cedar Rapids-area stops
Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls tie rising ACA premiums, halted food aid to GOP policies as Republicans accuse Democrats of prolonging the shutdown
Nov. 3, 2025 5:30 am, Updated: Nov. 3, 2025 7:37 am
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CEDAR RAPIDS — Iowa Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Zach Wahls and Josh Turek used twin events in Linn County on Saturday to attack Republicans over health care and food assistance funding.
The pair tied their critique to Saturday’s start of Affordable Care Act open enrollment and a protracted federal government shutdown threatening to disrupt November Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for more than 260,000 Iowans who rely on the program each month to help afford food.
Wahls, a state senator from Coralville, rallied outside U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson’s Cedar Rapids district office Saturday morning, urging the Marion Republican — who is running to succeed U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst in 2026 — to “go back to Washington and vote to protect the ACA and reopen the government.”
Later in Hiawatha, Turek, a state representative from Council Bluffs, toured the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program (HACAP) food bank, hearing from staff about the shutdown’s impact and echoed Democratic warnings that GOP policies will drive up health costs and threaten access to food aid.
Wahls rallies for ACA, calls GOP cuts ‘a crisis’
At the Cedar Rapids rally, Wahls said rising insurance premiums and the looming expiration of enhanced federal premium tax credits amount to a manufactured crisis.
“I’m here to stand up and support the affordable health care that all Iowans deserve,” he told supporters. Republicans, he said, “created a crisis by ending health care investments” and are “refusing to negotiate to fix it.”
He accused Hinson of siding with “billionaires and the big corporations who fund her campaigns,” and said, “You must reverse the cuts to our affordable health care and reopen our government.”
Roughly 137,000 Iowans currently rely on the Affordable Care Act marketplace for coverage. Democrats are pushing to extend enhanced premium subsidies beyond their scheduled Dec. 31 expiration. Senate Republicans say they’re willing to discuss that after reopening the government.
Hinson’s campaign countered that Wahls and national Democrats are the ones prolonging the shutdown.
“Ashley Hinson voted to keep the government open. Zach Wahls has joined Chuck Schumer in supporting this shutdown,” her campaign said in a statement. “As soon as the Democrats reopen the government, we can work on fixing rising Obamacare premiums and lowering health care costs for working families. That can’t happen while Democrats like Zach Wahls are playing politics with people’s lives and keeping the government shut down.”
Iowans fear higher costs as subsidies expire
Rally attendee Sara Todd, a Cedar Rapids nurse and mother of a son with disabilities, said Republican-backed Medicaid reductions included in this summer’s tax-and-spending bill threaten critical care for vulnerable families. Her son Adam relies on Medicaid services provided through The Arc of East Central Iowa, which receives 83 percent of its funding from the program.
“Cuts would be morally and ethically wrong,” she said, warning they could worsen health outcomes, crowd emergency rooms and destabilize rural hospitals.
Self-employed contractor John Lynch, 46, said he worries he’ll be priced out when subsidies expire and premiums jump.
Lynch said he supports Wahls’ campaign and urged congressional Republicans to listen to their constituents, criticizing their current actions on health care.
“I mean, they should be ashamed of what they're doing,” he said. “It's awful.”
Rates up, subsidies set to sunset
Insurers have filed 2026 rate increases from about 12 percent to nearly 27 percent, citing higher medical costs, increased utilization, the rollback of subsidies and the growing popularity of expensive GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, according to the Iowa Insurance Division and KFF, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization focused on health policy research.
Approved average increases include:
- Wellmark Health Plan of Iowa: 12.6 percent
- UnitedHealthcare Plan of the River Valley: 18.8 percent
- Oscar Insurance: 12.5 percent
- Iowa Total Care: 26.9 percent
- Medica Insurance Company: 26.8 percent
Enhanced premium tax credits enacted in 2021 and extended through 2025 lowered monthly costs for tens of thousands of Iowans. Without congressional action, those boosts lapse at year’s end, returning assistance to pre-pandemic levels and cutting off help for middle-income households earning more than four times the federal poverty line.
The Insurance Division estimates a family of four at 199 percent of the poverty line would see monthly costs rise from $101 to $345, while a 55-year-old couple at 450 percent would jump from $652 to $1,659. KFF projects a 60-year-old couple making $82,000 could see their benchmark premium nearly triple.
Open enrollment for 2026 plans began Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 15.
GOP pushback
Republicans argue Democrats set the subsidy timeline and that long-term structural flaws in the law — not expiring boosts — are fueling premium hikes.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said exchange premiums “have risen 74 percent” since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, while provider networks have shrunk. He said current increases averaging 20 percent stem largely from medical inflation, not subsidy changes.
“Republicans will keep working to reduce health care costs for American families. In the meantime, why can’t we keep the government open?” Grassley said.
Wahls rejected that framing, saying Republicans “had six months to negotiate a deal before they hit the funding deadline” and “are responsible for this shutdown.” Democrats, he said, acted to bring premiums down, while “Republicans like Ashley Hinson ended those investments,” causing prices to rise again.
“I don’t think anyone believes the health care system is perfect,” Wahls said. “But we are facing today an acute crisis created by Republicans like Ashley Hinson, who voted to make health care more expensive and unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of Iowans.”
SNAP and shutdown politics
Both Wahls and Turek also faulted Republicans for threatening safety-net programs during the shutdown. “Can you think of anything less Iowan than pitting hungry people against sick people?” Wahls asked. He pledged to strengthen the ACA, expand Medicare benefits, lower the eligibility age, invest in mental health, and cap insulin costs.
In his official capacity as a legislator, Turek toured HACAP’s food pantry in Hiawatha to assess how agencies are responding to halted SNAP payments. “People that are on SNAP — you’re talking about families with children, disabled, the elderly, veterans,” he said, calling them “the most vulnerable in the state.”
HACAP leaders described mounting pressure on food banks and other federally funded programs such as heating assistance and Head Start.
“Food banks are made to be responsive, but for us to believe we can fill the gap with the absence of SNAP benefits is not going to happen,” said Kim Guardado, HACAP’s food reservoir director.
Gov. Kim Reynolds this week announced a plan to use Iowa HHS funds to match up to $1 million in donations to the state’s six regional food banks starting Nov. 3. Guardado praised the move but said the details remain unclear.
Food banks brace for strain
Guardado said HACAP is preparing for a surge in need by boosting food purchases, offering $200,000 in grants to partner pantries, exploring volunteer or even National Guard help for deliveries, and increasing the frequency of community food distributions.
HACAP serves nine counties and distributes roughly 1 million pounds of food monthly — a 58 percent increase since the pandemic. About 60 percent of its food comes from donations, 20 percent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and 20 percent from purchases. With federal aid shrinking, the agency’s food-purchase spending has soared from $150,000 in 2019 to $1.4 million this year.
While state and local efforts help, Guardado said food banks can’t fully replace the loss of SNAP assistance for struggling families.
Turek: ‘Work until you find a solution’
Speaking to reporters afterward as a Senate candidate, Turek said the shutdown’s consequences for food aid are “genuinely concerning.”
“You’ve got 263,000 Iowans that are looking at losing their basic food assistance,” he said. “ … We are seeing a huge, huge need, and our pantries, at least on the western side state, are empty. The demand is up. The resources are down.”
Turek said he supports using remaining pandemic-relief interest dollars — about $107 million — to sustain SNAP payments for two months while Congress acts, and urged Iowa to join other states pressing the USDA to restore funding.
Iowa Democratic lawmakers have formally asked Reynolds to authorize those funds, arguing they were intended “to lift Iowa’s communities and protect our most vulnerable during the pandemic.”
Turek said the scale of need dwarfs the governor’s proposed match. “This is costing the state $45 million every single month, and we need to ensure that Iowans aren’t going without food,” he said. “If I was up in D.C., I would be working on this issue. I don’t think they should adjourn at all — work until you find a solution.”
Pressed about partisan blame, he said: “The blame is on Washington — and we know who’s in power right now. But ultimately, I don’t think that there’s a whole lot of value in us just sitting here and throwing shots when 263,000 Iowans are going to lose their food assistance.”
Republicans: Democrats holding up funding
Hinson’s campaign pushed back, accusing Democrats of “playing politics” with the shutdown and food aid programs.
“The only reason SNAP isn’t funded is because Democrats are keeping the government closed,” her campaign said. “Ashley voted to keep the government open and SNAP funded for Iowans in need, while Democrats like Turek and Wahls support using vulnerable Iowans as leverage.”
Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com
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