WASHINGTON (AP) — The government shutdown has reopened debate on what has been a central issue for both major political parties in the last 15 years: the future of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Tax credits for people who get health insurance through the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, expire at the end of the year.

Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension of the expanded subsidies. Republicans say they won’t negotiate until Democrats vote to reopen the government. Lawmakers in both parties have been working on potential solutions behind the scenes, hoping that leaders will eventually start to talk, but it’s unclear if the two sides could find compromise.

As Congress circles the issue, a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 6 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their health costs going up in the next year. Those worries extend across age groups and include people with and without health insurance, the poll found.

A look at the subsidies that are expiring, the politics of the ACA and what Congress might do:

Enhanced premium help during the pandemic

Passed in 2010, the ACA was meant to decrease the number of uninsured people in the country and make coverage more affordable for those who don’t have private insurance. The law created state by state exchanges, some of which are run by the individual states, to try to increase the pool of the insured and bring down rates.

In 2021, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House during the COVID-19 pandemic, they expanded premium help that was already in the law. The changes included eliminating premiums for some lower-income enrollees, ensuring that higher earners paid no more than 8.5% of their income and expanding eligibility for middle-class earners.

The expanded subsidies pushed enrollment to new levels and drove the rate of uninsured people to a historic low. This year, a record 24 million people have signed up for insurance coverage through the ACA, in large part because billions of dollars in subsidies have made the plans more affordable for many people.

If the tax credits expire, annual out-of-pocket premiums are estimated to increase by 114% — an average of $1,016 — next year, according to an analysis from KFF.

Democrats push to extend subsidies

Democrats extended those tax credits in 2022 for another three years but were not able to make them permanent. The credits are set to expire Jan. 1, with Republicans now in full control.

Lacking in power and sensing a political opportunity, Democrats used some of their only leverage and forced a government shutdown over the issue when federal funding ran out on Oct. 1. They say they won’t vote for a House-passed bill to reopen the government until Republicans give them some certainty that the subsidies will be extended.

Democrats introduced legislation in September to permanently extend the premium tax credits, but they have suggested that they are open to a shorter period.

“We need a serious negotiation,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly said.

Republicans try to scale the ACA back, again

The Democratic demands on health care have reignited longstanding Republican complaints about the ACA, which they have campaigned against for years and tried and failed to repeal in 2017. Many in the party say that if Congress is going to act, they want to scrap the expanded subsidies and overhaul the entire law.

The problem is not the expiring subsidies but “the cost of health care,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said Tuesday.

In a virtual briefing Tuesday, the libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative Paragon Health Institute branded the subsidies as President Joe Biden’s “COVID credits” and claimed they’ve enabled fraudsters to sign people up for fully subsidized plans without their knowledge.

Others have pitched more modest proposals that could potentially win over some Democrats. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said he is open to extending the subsidies with changes, including lower income limits and a stop to auto-enrollment that may sign up people who don’t need the coverage.

The ACA is “in desperate need of reform,” Thune has said.

House Republicans are considering their own ideas for reforming the ACA, including proposals for phasing out the subsidies for new enrollees. And they have begun to discuss whether to combine health care reforms with a new government funding bill and send it to the Senate for consideration once they return to Washington.

“We will probably negotiate some off-ramp” to ease the transition back to pre-COVID-19 levels, said Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, the head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, during a virtual town hall Tuesday.

Is compromise possible?

A number of Republicans want to extend the subsidies. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said most people who are using the exchanges created by the ACA “don’t really have another option, and it’s already really, really expensive. So I think there are things we can do to reform the program.”

Hawley said he had been having conversations with other senators about what those changes could be, including proposals for income limits, which he said he sees as a “very reasonable.”

Bipartisan groups of lawmakers have been discussing the income limits and other ideas, including making the lowest-income people pay very low premiums instead of nothing. Some Republicans have advocated for that change to ensure that all enrollees are aware they have coverage and need it. Other proposals would extend the subsidies for a year or two or slowly phase them out.

It’s unclear if any of those ideas could gain traction on both sides — or any interest from the White House, where President Donald Trump has remained mostly disengaged. Despite the public stalemate, though, lawmakers are feeling increased urgency to find a solution as the Nov. 1 open enrollment date approaches.

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire has been talking to lawmakers since the shutdown began, trying to find areas of compromise. On Tuesday, she suggested that Congress could also look at extending the enrollment dates for the ACA since Congress is stalled on the subsidies.

“These costs are going to affect all of us, and it’s going to affect our health care system,” she said.

PARIS (AP) — The glittering sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds that once adorned France’s royals could well be gone forever, experts say after a brazen, four-minute heist in broad daylight left the nation stunned and the government struggling to explain a new debacle at the Louvre.

Each stolen piece — an emerald necklace and earrings, two crowns, two brooches, a sapphire necklace and a single earring — represents the pinnacle of 19th century “haute joaillerie,” or fine jewelry. For the royals, they were more than decoration. The pieces were political statements of France’s wealth, power and cultural import. They are so significant that they were among treasures saved from the government’s 1887 auction of most royal jewels.

The Louvre reopened Wednesday for the first time since the heist Sunday morning, although the Apollo Gallery where the theft occurred remained closed.

Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor whose office is leading the investigation, said Tuesday that in monetary terms, the stolen jewelry is worth an estimated $102 million (88 million euros) — a valuation that doesn’t include historical worth. About 100 investigators are involved in the police hunt for the suspects and the gems, she said.

The theft of the crown jewels left the French government scrambling — again — to explain the latest embarrassment at the Louvre, which is plagued by overcrowding and outdated facilities. Activists in 2024 threw a can of soup at the Mona Lisa. And in June, the museum was brought to a halt by its own striking staff, who complained about mass tourism. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the Mona Lisa, stolen by a former museum worker in 1911 and recovered two years later, will get its own room under a major renovation.

Now the sparkling jewels, artifacts of a French culture of long ago, are likely being secretly dismantled and sold off in a rush as individual pieces that may or may not be identifiable as part of the French crown jewels, experts say.

“It’s extremely unlikely these jewels will ever be retrieved and seen again,” said Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, a major European diamond jeweler, said in a statement. “If these gems are broken up and sold off, they will, in effect, vanish from history and be lost to the world forever.”

Crown jewels are symbols of heritage and national pride

At once intimate and public, crown jewels are kept secured from the Tower of London to Tokyo’s Imperial Palace as visual symbols of national identities.

The four suspected robbers split into two pairs, with two people aboard a truck equipped with a cherry picker they used to climb up to the Galerie d’Apollon and two others piloting motorbikes used in the gang’s getaway, authorities said.

Taken, officials said, were eight pieces, part of a collection whose origin as crown jewels date back to the 16th century when King Francis I decreed that they belonged to the state. The Paris prosecutor’s office said that two men with bright yellow jackets broke into the gallery at 9:34 a.m. — half an hour past opening time — and left the room at 9:38 a.m. before fleeing on two motorbikes.

The missing pieces include two crowns, or diadems. One, given by Emperor Napoleon III to the Empress Eugenie in 1853 to celebrate their wedding, holds more than 200 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds. The second is a starry sapphire-and-diamond headpiece — and also a necklace and single earring— worn by, among others, Queen Marie-Amelie, French authorities said.

Also stolen: a necklace of dozens of emeralds and more than 1,000 diamonds that was a wedding gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, in 1810. The matching earrings also were stolen. The thieves also made off with a reliquary brooch and a large bodice bow worn by Empress Eugenie — both pieces diamond-encrusted, French officials said.

The robbers dropped or abandoned a hefty ninth piece, which was damaged: a crown adorned with gold eagles, 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, worn by Empress Eugenie.

Left untouched were other items in the crown jewel collection, which before the heist included 23 jewels, according to the Louvre. Remaining, for example, is the plum-sized Regent, a white diamond said to be the largest of its kind in Europe.

Now it’s a race against time

Beyond the monetary value of the stolen jewels, the emotional loss is keenly felt. Many have described France’s failure to secure its most precious items as a wounding blow to national pride.

“These are family souvenirs that have been taken from the French,” conservative lawmaker Maxime Michelet said Tuesday in Parliament, quizzing the government about security at the Louvre and other cultural sites.

“Empress Eugenie’s crown — stolen, then dropped and found broken in the gutter, has become the symbol of the decline of a nation that used to be so admired,” Michelet said. “It is shameful for our country, incapable of guaranteeing the security of the world’s largest museum.”

The theft was not the first Louvre heist in recent years. But it stood out for its forethought, speed and almost cinematic quality as one of the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory. In fact, it echoed the fictional theft from the Louvre of a royal crown by a “gentleman thief” in the French television show “Lupin” — which in turn is based on a 1905 series of stories.

The romance of such a theft is mostly a creation of showbiz, according to one theft investigator. Christopher A. Marinello, a lawyer with Art Recovery International, said he’s never seen a “theft-to-order” by some shadowy secret collector.

“These criminals are just looking to steal whatever they can,” Marinello said. “They chose this room because it was close to a window. They chose these jewels because they figured that they could break them apart, take out the settings, take out the diamonds and the sapphires and the emeralds” overseas to “a dodgy dealer that’s willing to recut them and no one would ever know what they did.”

What happens now is a race against time both for the French authorities hunting the thieves and for the perpetrators themselves, who will have a hard time finding buyers for the pieces in all their royal glory.

“Nobody will touch these objects. They are too famous. It’s too hot. If you get caught you will end up in prison,” said Dutch art sleuth Arthur Brand. “You cannot sell them, you cannot leave them to your children.”