While Democrats spotlight health care as part of their party-wide focus on affordability ahead of the midterms, the legislative push to address drug prices and the costs of medical insurance and treatments remains at a standstill in Washington.

After Senate Democrats shut down the majority of the federal government for 43 days in the fall to demand an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, a group of moderates teamed up with select Republicans to negotiate a continuation of the tax credits paired with reforms. Those conversations came to a sudden halt in early February, and negotiators couldn’t even agree on why conversations ended.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, one of the key negotiators through the fall and winter, acknowledged that those conversations are over, but she told NOTUS that Democrats are weighing ways to bring the topic back up in Congress.

Shaheen said Democrats might have an opportunity to inject some energy into the health care conversation in the coming week as Republicans prepare to pass a party-line spending bill, a process that could allow Democrats to force a vote on health-care-related issues.

“I think you will hear it come up at the hearing next week,” Shaheen said, referring to the scheduled hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We have reconciliation coming up next week, that will be an opportunity … I haven’t talked to leadership, but I think that’s something we should do.”

While Democrats continue to champion lower health care costs on the campaign trail and prepare to hammer Kennedy on the issue, there is still little appetite among both Democrats and Republicans to team up and overcome the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster and achieve much of anything on health care –– whether it’s extending the ACA tax credits, codifying drug-pricing caps or something else.

As Sen. Brian Schatz, the Senate Democratic chief deputy whip, told NOTUS about Republicans: “Not while they’re in charge.”

President Donald Trump has called on Congress to implement his health care agenda, which takes a different approach than the one bipartisan talks considered. At his State of the Union address, he asked lawmakers to codify health care policies like his “Most-Favored-Nation Drug Pricing” –– a demand that received a cool reception on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat who serves on the HELP Committee, told NOTUS that Democrats are not open to working on legislation like “TrumpRx” to lower drug prices. He said his caucus is still squarely focused on renewing the expired ACA subsidies.

“We’re continuing to push when it comes to the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

Kim said that as the midterms approach, Democrats are focused on criticizing Republicans and the Trump administration over the increased costs of health care.

“We’re showing the trade-offs here, which is that for the amount of money that this president is pushing with this war, we could have so much of this effort to be able to lower health care costs,” he said. “That’s a trade-off that the American people need to see.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, one of the Democrats who voted to end the record-breaking shutdown in the fall, echoed Kim. He told NOTUS that although health care may not be center stage on Capitol Hill right now, it would be a defining issue in the midterms.

“It’s going to be center stage in the elections,” Kaine said. “I think health care, both the ACA subsidies and the Medicaid cuts, are going to be dominating issues in the Virginia elections.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren maintains that the health care broadly remains one of Democrats’ strongest talking points –– and one of Republicans’ weakest –– as her party lobbies for control of both chambers of Congress.

“15 million people lost their health care coverage,” Warren said. “This is an issue that the Republicans cannot mention, because people are suffering in every state.”

About one in 10 of the 24 million people enrolled in ACA plans last year dropped their health insurance in 2026, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health-policy research group. And about 17% of returning enrollees said they weren’t sure if they would be able to afford the premiums, the same study found. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that total enrollment in the program is expected to fall to 12.5 million by 2028.

Sen. Martin Heinrich told NOTUS that although gas prices and utility costs are soaring and Democrats have turned their attention to Trump’s war with Iran, those topics haven’t distracted them from discussing health care.

“A lot of people are talking about how we can afford a billion dollars a day on the war in Iran and we can’t afford to help people with their health care costs,” Heinrich said.

But most Senate Democrats admitted there’s not much point engaging with Republicans on trying to lower health care costs.

“Medical research remains a bipartisan space, and telehealth, which is something I’ve done since I got here, is bipartisan,” Schatz said. “So there’s still room for us to work together on a bipartisan basis. But we shouldn’t have any illusions about anything on costs.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican who led the bipartisan working group focused on extending the ACA subsidies, told NOTUS that Democrats’ focus on health care throughout the shutdown in the fall was an overreaction.

“They exaggerated the scale of it. They were just wrong,” Moreno said. “They massively oversold what the effects were going to be. The reality is, because of what we’re doing with policy, a lot of people are shifting to private insurance. So I think it’s one of those things where they shut the government down for no reason.”

While it’s clear that the legislative prospects for a bipartisan bill to deal with spiking health care costs have dimmed, the spotlight on the issue has shifted from the back rooms of the Senate to the campaign trail.