Virginians facing high health care costs attend Trump speech with Democratic lawmakers

Three Virginians who are struggling to afford health care after President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress refused to extend an enhanced federal health insurance subsidy attended Trump’s State of the Union address on Feb. 24 as guests of Democratic lawmakers.

Rena Bumbray-Graves of Woodbridge, Lester Johnson of Richmond, and Becky Winstead-Roberts of Virginia Beach said they hoped that their presence in the chamber of the House of Representatives might spotlight the consequences of Republican policies for real people. 

The trio were guests of Democratic representatives who voted to extend the subsidy, which helped 22 million Americans afford health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace prior to its expiration in December 2025. 

Last year, congressional Democrats pushed to extend the health insurance premium subsidies as part of stopgap federal funding legislation and as a standalone bill. Trump and Republicans blocked those efforts.

In the House, Democrats and a handful of Republicans used a discharge petition (a parliamentary maneuver that allows a majority of lawmakers to bring a bill to the floor against the wishes of the House leadership) to bring a three-year extension of the subsidies up for a vote. It passed on Jan. 8, but has been stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. 

Without the subsidies, health insurance became more expensive for tens of thousands of Virginians: The roughly 411,000 Virginians who had ACA marketplace insurance plans saw their premiums go up by an average of more than 20%. For many, insurance premiums are now simply unaffordable. According to data provided by Virginia’s state-run Insurance Marketplace, about 19,000 fewer Virginians were enrolled in marketplace plans in January 2026 than had been a year earlier. 

Bumbray-Graves, who attended Trump’s speech as the guest of Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, lost her coverage.

“We went to the marketplace for 2025 and it was something me and my husband could afford,” Bumbray-Graves told the Virginia Independent in a phone interview. “We were going to renew or look for something else, but when we went back out there, it was like going from $544 up to over $13 [hundred]. And right now, the ones we’ve been looking at have been over $16 [hundred], and that’s just not affordable.” 

Bumbray-Graves, who works as a home care worker, noted that she has medical issues that require regular doctor’s visits and expensive medications. “Because of being out of pocket, I’m not able to pay for some of the medications that can help me, because they’re way too expensive. So I just pay for the things that I cant afford and pray that everything will go OK,” she said. “If I’m unable to stay healthy, then how can I take care of anyone else?” 

“In their One Big Ugly Bill, Donald Trump and House Republicans slashed health care, making the largest cut to Medicaid in history, and then made it worse by refusing to extend the Affordable Care Act premium tax credits,” Scott said in a press release. “Mrs. Bumbray-Graves is a hardworking Virginian who will put a spotlight on the real-word consequences of Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans’ health care crisis.”

Johnson, the owner of the Richmond soul food restaurant Mama J’s, was the guest of Virginia Democratic Rep. Jennifer McClellan. 

Johnson gets his family’s insurance through the marketplace. “The issue that I’m having right now is that the cost has went up. We used it, got the same plan that we had last year, but the plan price went from around $650 to $1,000,” he said in a phone interview. “There’s a lot of pressure financially to make ends meet at this point.”

Johnson’s 9-year-old daughter has allergies and asthma. “It’s really not an option for us not to have health insurance,” he said.

“Congresswoman McClellan plans to attend the State of the Union address on Tuesday and views it as an opportunity to share the stories of those impacted by the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans’ actions over the past year,” a spokesperson for McClellan said in a statement. “She will be bringing a guest who can speak to how their disastrous policies have made it harder for him and his family to make ends meet as they face an active health care crisis.”

Winstead-Roberts, a Virginia Beach small business owner, attended as the guest of California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu. She told the Virginia Independent that she was born with a dislocated hip and developed diabetic ketoacidosis a couple of years ago. Medical interventions averted serious damage, but she now requires extensive physical therapy to relearn to walk. 

“I’m hoping by June that maybe I’ll be able to do some walking if I can continue getting the physical therapy,” she said, but noted that she is struggling to afford her insurance premiums after a 110% increase along with an increase in her co-pays: “The further in the year it goes, the harder it’s going to be, and I’m hoping that maybe the government will get its act together and get things back on track.” 

She hoped her presence at the State of the Union address would send a message to the president. “I think that it might serve to maybe put a face to the Affordable Care Act a little,” she said, noting that she would be attending in a wheelchair. “Look at that wheelchair and realize that, if the changes that need and should be made are made, I may not be in that wheelchair anymore. And I am one of 43 million people, I believe, that are on the Affordable Care Act, and a bunch more people that are not on the Affordable Care Act, that really do need to be on the Affordable Care Act, but can’t afford the premiums.”

In Richmond, the Democratic-led General Assembly is working toward including in its budget funds to make up for some of the federal cuts to the ACA subsidies and other health care programs. Budget writers in the Senate have proposed $200 million to subsidize health insurance premiums, according to the Virginia Mercury, while leaders in the House of Delegates have proposed $79.1 million, though neither figure would be enough to make up for all of the lost federal funds.

“Every dollar matters at this point,” Johnson said, but noted that it is impossible for the state government to fund everything: “Virginia is required to balance their budget, unlike the federal government. So the legislators and the governor in Virginia are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.” 

Winstead-Roberts said she is currently represented by Republican Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, who voted against extending the subsidies after previously acknowledging that expiration would hurt 33,000 of her constituents. 

Winstead-Roberts plans to vote yes in the April 21 statewide referendum on a proposed constitutional amendment to temporarily change the way Virginia draws its congressional map in hopes of electing a Congress in the 2026 midterms that would be more reflective of the popular will. 

She noted that her district was made more Republican during the last redistricting process, helping Kiggans to win. “Taking away a part of Norfolk, taking away a couple of other things, putting into that areas that were more rural and tend to be more Republican,” she said, “So I look at it as just undoing the damage that was done.”

Trump, who promised during his first run in for president, in 2016, to replace Obamacare with “something terrific” and to provide “insurance for everybody,” said in his latest State of the Union speech that he now wants to “stop all payments to big insurance companies and, instead, give that money directly to people so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower cost.”