DOGE cost me my job. Will Republicans take my healthcare, too? | Opinion
I called 988, the national mental health Lifeline, last night, not because I wanted someone to stop me from committing suicide, but because I am in serious emotional, financial and existential crisis. Among my other stressors, I am about to lose my ability to get healthcare for myself and my daughter.
Why? Because after more than eight months of joblessness, following the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) dismantling of U.S. involvement in global health and development, I am choosing to start a part-time temp job where I will use my experience and skills at one-third of my former hourly rate, minus all benefits.
I am choosing to work, which is why I need the Affordable Care Act (ACA) plan subsidies.
I will earn just enough to pay my mortgage, but too much to qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid was always intended to be a stopgap measure for my family until I could find full-time employment with benefits. Incredibly, that has not happened despite my wide-ranging, ongoing job search. As a single mother, I need the ACA subsidies to continue managing my daughter’s health conditions and my own.
For nearly 21 years, I had worked for a federal contracting organization earning a solid wage, health, life and catastrophe insurance and a pension. I paid my taxes. But when foreign aid was reneged via executive order on Inauguration Day, the company released many of its long-time employees to fend for ourselves.
My daughter and I are just one tranche of Americans whom Congress is either fighting for or discounting through the government shutdown. This ongoing ACA subsidy debate is not about whether “illegal aliens” (better said as undocumented economic, cultural, and social contributors, and neighbors, friends, and family members) are getting healthcare unduly. It is about whether Americans with papers deserve affordable access to healthcare.
For those unaware of how ex-federal contractors have fared since January 2025, know this: There is a causal link between the government’s intentional elimination of a mammoth source of employment and the now-desperate need of ex-federal contractors like me for ACA subsidies. The U.S. job market cannot absorb us. We have no other means of getting health insurance.
Yes, I have a support system of friends. But last night, when I dialed 988, I just needed to cry out my despair without burdening someone in a similar position; or someone who would advise me to forget about my old career and simply remake myself to meet the needs of the market; or someone who would tell me to not take the part-time temp job I have already accepted, given my worry about losing Medicaid, even though, for my mental health, I really need to rejoin the workforce, resume making meaningful contributions and get paid.
The woman on the other side of 988 picked up the call quickly, validated my feelings appropriately, and was, coincidentally, culturally akin, such that I felt less compelled to explain the implications of having done all the things Americans are supposed to do to thrive and yet still finding myself here.
What did I miss? She did not try to tell me what to do or how to feel. But I panicked before I let her go. “I hope they are paying you a decent wage. This isn’t a volunteer job, is it? Are you getting paid enough? I hope they are giving you benefits. You need benefits.” She assured me I did not need to worry about her. She said she was okay.
But that is just how I made it through last evening. Only Congress can provide a long-lasting solution for the nights in the future. Thanks to the elimination of thousands of jobs by DOGE and other U.S. government forces, ex-federal contractors now join small business owners and their employees, the self-employed, the underemployed and other workers without employer-sponsored insurance in this collectively American need for ongoing — not stopgap — government subsidies for ACA plans.
Federal contractors have been cast out of the workforce and left vulnerable. Congress must permanently extend the ACA subsidies to help me, my daughter and the thousands of others in this distinctly American dilemma.
Natasha Mack, PhD, is a former science writer and editor in global health and development.
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "DOGE cost me my job. Will Republicans take my healthcare, too? | Opinion."