How a Government Shutdown Could Affect You

Medicare

Like Social Security payments, Medicare benefits are mandatory spending and largely continue as normal during a shutdown. Enrollees can still go to the doctor or hospital and get their drug prescriptions filled. Depending on how long a shutdown lasts, medical providers could see a lag in their payments.

If you want to enroll in Medicare during a shutdown, you can still go to the Social Security website, ssa.gov, and fill out an application. (The SSA handles Medicare enrollment.) The Medicare hotline (800-633-4227) continues to operate.

You can get a replacement Medicare card online if you have a My Social Security account (Medicare cards are generated by the Social Security Administration), but this service is not available by phone or at Social Security offices. 

Mail delivery

Letters and packages are being delivered as usual, and post office branches remain open. The U.S. Postal Service is an independent agency, and because it does not depend on the federal budget for its funding, it isn't affected by a shutdown.

Veterans

Most government services for military veterans and their families continue during a shutdown, including those provided by the Veterans Health Administration. VA hospitals remain open and fully staffed. The Tricare health insurance program operates as usual. Veterans still get their pension benefits and claims continue to be processed.

VA benefits regional offices and call centers for GI bill assistance, and National Cemetery Applicant Assistance are generally closed during a shutdown. Grounds maintenance and placement of permanent headstones at VA cemeteries is halted, but burials and processing of applications for burial benefits continue.

Federal workers and retirees

The federal government is the country’s largest employer, with more than 2.1 million workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 750,000 federal workers were furloughed during the 2025 shutdown.

Retired federal employees continue to receive their pensions on schedule. They are paid from the Civil Service and Disability Trust Fund, which is not dependent on the annual appropriations process, according to the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), a nonprofit that advocates for current and former federal workers.

Transportation

Air travel: Air traffic controllers and security screeners are considered essential workers, so they are required to work during the shutdown without pay. However, amid staffing shortage during the 2025 shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a mandate for airlines to reduce air traffic across 40 of the nation’s busiest airports. Thousands of flights were cancelled and thousands more were delayed.

Train travel: Amtrak trains run as usual. Although federally owned, Amtrak is chartered as a private corporation and not subject to a government shutdown.

Passports: The U.S. State Department continues to issue and renew passports and visas. Routine passport applications can be completed at most post offices, which remain open during a government shutdown. However, passport offices located in federal buildings may be closed.

Food safety

Meat, poultry, eggs and various species of catfish processed at nearly 7,100 commercial facilities in the U.S. continue to be inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. It’s not clear how other food-processing facilities — such as cereal makers, ice cream plants and cheese factories — are affected. 

Under its 2025 shutdown plan, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limited “the number and type of inspections … unless the inspections are for cause or otherwise necessary to detect and address imminent threats to the safety of human life, or can be conducted with carryover user fee funding.”

Drug safety

The FDA continues to approve medications, inspect drug-manufacturing facilities and regulate tobacco products during a shutdown, as these functions are funded by user fees. It remains able to address imminent threats to human health or life, including outbreaks of foodborne illness and infectious diseases, product recalls and drug shortages.

Nutrition

Millions of older adults who rely on food assistance faced delayed payments due to the shutdown. Low-income households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) received benefits for October but not November. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees SNAP, said there were “insufficient funds” to pay benefits after Oct. 31, a month into the shutdown.

National parks and monuments

In general, national parks remain open but operate at reduced capacity. Nearly two-thirds of the National Park Service workforce was furloughed during the 2025 shutdown, according to the agency’s contingency plan, and the remaining employees worked without pay.

Park roads, trails, lookouts and other open spaces generally remain open to visitors. However, parks without accessible areas would be closed.

The Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian operates 21 museums, most of them in Washington, D.C., and the National Zoo, also in Washington. It gets about 62 percent of its funding from the federal government and the rest from private sources.

During a shutdown, the Smithsonian can keep its facilities open using what’s left of its funding from the previous fiscal year, but it closes sites when that money is exhausted. That happened 10 days into the 2025 shutdown, when the Smithsonian’s museums, research centers and the National Zoo shut down and stayed closed until the new budget law was in place 

Randy Lilleston, Andy Markowitz, Susan Milligan, Molly Snow, Berit Thorkelson and Peter Urban contributed to this article.