Will Trump Cave on Obamacare Subsidies?

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Will Trump cave? I’m giving fair warning right here. This is one of those podcasts where, you know, I may lose it. I may have one of those Howard Beale type of moments. Will Trump cave? Will the Republicans cave to Democrats? What you’re watching right now, this theater that’s taking place all in front of us with mariachi bands and, you know, memes and all sorts of stuff.

Trump out there, know, playing chess, you know, all this stuff that’s going on out there. I’m not buying any of it, quite frankly. The Republican Party is, for the most part, it’s pretty much non-existent and it’s very, very weak, despite what they like to show with their memes and all of this other nonsense that’s going on.

Again, we’re being told, we’re being told that, boy, Trump has got his, Trump’s got his, he’s got Russ Vaught out there. Russ is tweeting a lot. He’s taken to Twitter a lot about all the things that they’re planning on doing. And I use air quotes right there. Planning on doing, okay, they’re going to shut down this, they’re going to fire this one, they’re going to fire that one. They’re going to cut back on all sorts of green initiatives in blue states.

They gave a delay to 18 billion dollars in New York City.

I’m gonna say straight up, it’s all bullshit. Mark my words, it’s all bullshit. This is all for show right now. Trump will allow all that spending, of that, they’re not gonna make jobs cut. They’re not gonna do any of that. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not. But then, know, they’ll, you know, they’ll…

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come to some agreement and they’ll reopen the government. And the folks on the five, any other influencers out there, just, look at Trump, he’s playing 5D chess. He’s the ultimate negotiator. Yeah, he threatened the Democrats, all that stuff, and he got them to reopen the government. Okay.

And again, is just quite frankly, people with the religious belief in these people in Washington, DC. Let me tell you how we are about to get royally screwed. Okay, let tell you how we’re about to get royally screwed. President Trump thinks, okay, they’re out, thinks winning the messaging right now. Who’s gonna win the shutdown? That’s all they wanna talk about.

fight. Who’s going to win the shutdown? Well, the people inside Donald Trump’s circle right now, they’re worried. They’re worried about the midterms. They’re worried that Republicans are going to take the blame for allowing the health care subsidies. Again, these were health care subsidies that were put into place in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Okay. That expired. These were enhanced Obamacare subsidies. Now, again, the Republican Party, which is supposed to be the party, some fiscally sane party out there, they’re worried now that by taking away, taking away all the extra free money that you’re handing out, raising the cost, because that’s all we hear. Everyone, my God.

It’s going to raise the cost for millions of Americans. no, they’re not going to get more government money. It’s going to be terrible for the midterm elections.

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so right now inside the White House, and it makes me shift to my stomach. AIDS are discussing proposals to extend the enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. Trump’s not sure what he is going to do. Not sure what he’s going to do. I’m betting.

He’s going to He’s going to cave. Maybe if he caves, maybe he’ll get a few layoffs. Maybe he’ll get rid of some sort of green initiatives here and there and he will come out and declare victory.

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You’re talking, talking over a half a billion dollars. A half a billion dollars.

Again, Trump, Trump should be following going moving forward actually trying to fix health care here in the United States. That’s what he should be doing. We should be looking to repeal Obamacare and replace Obamacare because that’s the problem. The Republicans, they’re out there.

trying to convince Americans about money going to illegals, health for health care subsidies. Now, how does this happen? It happens through emergency room services. lot of my old lacrosse players that I coached way, way back when, they’re all doctors, surgeons, various different things, they would tell me the stories. Tell me stories, know, entire families coming into the emergency room at…

you know, 10, 11 o’clock at night and we provide health care for them. That’s just how it was. And this is going back prior to Obamacare. They were talking about that. But anyway, the issue right now is that ending the subsidies, and I’m going to get into subsidies in a bit, ending the subsidies is going to result in higher premiums for more than 20 million people. Of the 75 congressional districts where at least 10 % of the population is enrolled,

In Obamacare, 62 are in, no, red-leaning Florida, Georgia, and Texas. More than half of the 62 districts in those states are represented by Republicans. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, issued a memo outlining the risks for Republicans for not acting. By broad bipartisan margins, voters want to see the tax credits extended.

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rather than expire by the end of the year, whether in the context of premiums doubling or 5 million families losing their health insurance. More free shit. Why don’t we throw free beer on top of it too?

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Now, JD Vance came out and said he’d be willing to negotiate on health care if Democrats voted to reopen the government. Yes, moderates are saying, well, we can extend the extension for another year so we can get past the midterms.

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What’s going to happen is going to get ugly. This is where it kind of funky is that you’ve got the supposed and again, I don’t know if they’re going to stick to it. The House Freedom Caucus, who they’re saying they will not sign off on any extended subsidies. They will not do it, which would force Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, to work with Democrats to push this through. Let me put this in the perspective.

the number of people enrolled in Obamacare since 2021 has doubled.

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Doubled.

Let me get into subsidies before I get into Kimberly Strassel’s piece, because she’s great. She’s actually one of the great writers for the Wall Street Journal. Subsidies.

Subsidies are one of the dumbest things ever. Every single time I see a politician, I see some idiot on TV talking about subsidies. We need to increase subsidies. We need to help this. We need to help that. I’ve done this before on the program, okay? And I’m gonna be a little bit mean here, okay? Okay, some of you people have gotta wake the blank up. Anything that the government…

subsidizes anything is going to make the price go up. Period. end. We subsidized higher education. How did that work out? We subsidize housing. How did that work out? We’re in the business of subsidizing health care. How has that worked out? Any time you subsidize something.

the price is going to go up. I am going to give you an example I’ve given in the past. Let’s say, pretend that Democrats get pissed off that coffee has gotten too expensive. Say they want to start subsidizing people’s purchase of coffee.

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All the coffee manufacturers are gonna do are just raise their price. Healthcare here in the United States, it’s not a free market. You hear the funny thing is, you’re talking about, oh my God, all these people are gonna lose their health insurance, and the premiums are gonna go up, all this stuff. Let me ask you a question. What would happen? Okay, we’re gonna play pretend. I want you to use your brain here. What if we woke up tomorrow and there weren’t any insurance companies?

There weren’t any insurance companies. What would happen? Would hospitals shut down? Would doctors not go to work the next day? No, what would happen? You would actually have a free market and prices would find an equilibrium, if you will.

That’s all that would happen. How much money is wasted going to insurance companies and middlemen and processing all of this crap? I just got a bill. I just got a bill from a hospital on Long Island. My son, a years ago, hurt his foot very bad, was in the hospital for a couple of days. I’ve got health insurance. This was over three, three and a half years ago.

And I just got a bill, you owe this amount? Now I’ve got to go back and I got to check whether this is legit or not or what hasn’t been paid for. This is our healthcare system here in the United States. It’s a freaking joke.

It’s a freaking joke and this is by bloody design. You see what the Democrats are doing. They’re gonna lose their subsidies. People are gonna lose this, they’re gonna lose that. This gives them power because they’re giving people shit. And Republicans are going along with this. Shame on you because you know what? They’re all a bunch of freaking kitty cats.

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the Republican Party. This makes me bloody irate. You are not willing to put the work in. You’re not willing to go out there and explain to people to teach how stupid this is. You’re not willing to fix the system by blowing the whole damn thing up.

We want that. We’re gonna take the easy road. Okay? You know, you got the whole Robert Frost, the road less traveled. The Republican Party doesn’t take the road less traveled. They take the easiest path out. They want no discomfort at all. All they’re concerned about is the midterms. If that’s all you care about is the midterms, that’s your most important thing is getting re-elected. You suck.

You do. You suck. We should have a free market healthcare system here in the United States. The sooner you put all those healthcare, health insurance companies out of business, the better off we’re gonna be.

This is nonsensical. You can’t even buy, you can’t even buy true legit catastrophic health insurance because all this Obamacare crap. It’s a disaster is what it is. And as a Republican party go right damn along with the whole thing. Hey, let’s subsidize, we’re gonna might have to cave on this because we might piss off our voters. Do the right thing, how about that?

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Kimberly Strassel today, Wall Street Journal. When the smog clears from this first government shutdown, there will be ownership. Either a chastened Democrat party will own the embarrassment of a foolhardy closure, or, and this is what I’m telling you is going to happen, an outfoxed Republican party will own the 15-year-old unreformed calamity known as Obamacare.

Yeah, yep. yeah, that’s what they’re gonna make. Chuck Schumer wants 450 billion. Wants to make permanent the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. These were, again, these were for higher income Americans. Remember I told you yesterday 400 % above the poverty line. These were quote unquote temporarily enacted during the COVID pandemic.

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Yeah. Well, first you had JD Vance come out and go after Democrats for breaking the health care system in the first place only to hold the government hostage until we get everything we want. Good point, JD. Sounds good. Sounds good. But what’s really going on behind the scenes with those elephants, right? Could we be accused of being meanies if these handouts lapse?

Might an Obamacare bailout ease our path to reelection next year? And what better excuse for spending that money than to cite the shutdown as good cause to hear out Democrats? Less than 24 hours after Vance was spot on, someone got to him, got his mind right. And again, shame on you, JD.

Shame on you. He offered Democrats a shutdown off-ramp. Yep. Via a simple reversal of order. First vote to reopen the government, then we’ll give you everything we want.

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Republicans did nothing, okay, when it came to healthcare here in the United States. That’s how we ended up with the thing. They didn’t want to talk about rising healthcare prices, didn’t want to really talk about the problem. There were some good policies that were put into place. And again, I give all credit to the former Senator of the State of Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, who started the high deductible health insurance coupled

with health savings accounts. One of the things that we used to do back at Markowski Investments after that was instituted. Yeah, this was a financial strategy that I used for my clients. Many of my clients, I had them, and they were actually employees at companies, high paying jobs. I had them negotiate with human resources. I had them negotiate with human resources to basically form their own.

S corporation, whatever partnership, whatever it may be, get paid, get paid full and everything. They would take care of their own quarterly tax costs, everything along with it. And they would get out of, they would get out of the company insurance and the company would pay them for what their costs were to insure them, giving them a raise and then saving them money. Yeah, we should do that. It was genius, quite frankly.

myself. But anyway, you know, yeah, we were helping people do that at that point in time, Obamacare blew that whole thing up. That that strategy, you know, went by the wayside because of what we have today. After Obamacare was passed, again, the other former senator that I love this guy, Senator Tom Colburn, Dr. Colburn. They tried.

He wanted to have a pro market system. I remember yelling and screaming here on the program. said, know, insurance can’t be sold across state lines. There’s just, the thing was an absolute disaster. It’s not true insurance. could kind of make it more like insurance based upon it.

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Obamacare is failing. The reason why prices are going up is because Obamacare is failing miserably. The government mandates and insurance subsidies, you’ve got industry consolidation, inflated payments, a pass about those payments, constrained choices, steady erosion of employer provided coverage.

Continuing to shovel money into temporary COVID era bonuses to avoid a cliff. This is, they’re saying this, that’s putting a bandaid on the problem. It’s just making the problem worse.

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Why, why they quit? I mean, after the whole debacle with with John McCain, and again, this is another example of Republicans not wanting to put the hard work in. And to this day, I’m sticking by this at John McCain was the easiest person to send out there to vote down the repeal of Obamacare because we already knew about the personal issues that he had with Donald Trump and that’s

Donald Trump, let’s be honest, was, for lack of a better word, you know what, when it came to McCain, like him, hate him, to go after his military credentials in service was just plain stupid. Anyway, but I do believe that if McCain didn’t give the thumbs down, it would have been somebody else because the public doesn’t have anything.

They didn’t have anything, they didn’t wanna touch it, they didn’t wanna deal with it. In the same way, in the same way we can go back to, what was it, 2005, 2005 when George W. Bush actually had a plan. Actually, this would have been great. He actually had a plan for Social Security and what he wanted to do and reforming it and private accounts and.

You know, all this stuff and it was too difficult, according to Mitch McConnell. No, you again, we were spending too much political capital in Iraq. And again, I’m not a politician, nor could I ever be. OK, that’s one thing I don’t compromise my belief system for anybody. won’t do it. This is this is who you’re dealing with right now. So you’re dealing with right now again.

I know this might upset some people out there, I think more than likely, and I hope I’m wrong. Okay? You know how many times I come on and I predicted things here on the air? 25 years, radio show, TV, podcasts. You know how many times I predict things and I hope that I’m wrong?

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I wish I was wrong more often with this stuff, but I know who we’re dealing with at this point in time. They’re basically, in my opinion, they’re working behind the scenes so both the donkeys and the elephants can save face. Maybe we’ll cut a couple green things here and there. Trump can put out some clever memes. He can have his paid influencers put out what they want to put out. Democrats can do the same exact thing and they can both declare victory.

And we go further into debt and we continue to be saddled with Obamacare and a healthcare system that is failing. I mentioned it here on the program. It’s so bad. We might as well. Honestly, we might just trash the entire thing. But I don’t think, you know, I think they want to extend it as long as they possibly can because so many people are getting fat and happy. Not doctors, not surgeons, not the people that actually deserve to make the money.

But all the middlemen, all the insurance, all the bullshit on the in-between, they’re making a fortune for crying out loud. I actually saw this the other day, they were showing me the coding for a Medicare, Medicare appointment for a general practitioner there. A half an hour appointment, $48.

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How in the world does a doctor, there’s only so many hours in a day, okay? They have to sleep, they can’t be there 24 hours a day. How do they make a living with that?

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Yeah, yeah, I live in a booming city, okay? place is booming here in Tampa, Florida. It is. Try to find a doctor.

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They’re They’re done. They’re done. You have to go way out of the, mean, to find someone, you know, I don’t see doctors, I don’t trust, you anymore, and just don’t do that. But good luck.

How does a doctor take Medicare and keep the lights on?

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Man, this is our system. It’s our system. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Maybe the government take the whole thing over. The only thing I ask is that you allow for private insurance outside.

And I see more of the Concierge stuff coming into play here, there and everywhere, but we wrecked it. Okay. And it’s not just Obama. It’s both sides fault. Let’s just be honest here. Okay. Let’s be honest. It’s both sides. One quick note about Tom Colburn. Tom Colburn used to go home every weekend. He didn’t stay in Washington, DC. He was an OB-GYN. And

he got in trouble with the Senate. That’s a story. He got in trouble with the Senate because he would go back and he would practice medicine. And the Senate rules to know that’s a conflict, you can’t do that.

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Anyway, anyway, again, I mean to yell and scream. kind of do mean to yell and scream today. Can you understand my frustration with all of this? And again, I hope I’m Watchdogonwallstreet.com.