Yves here. Due to even more frequent and severe Trump whiplashes than usual, such as his forced climbdown on the Epstein files and his flip-flops on Ukraine, many important stories have not gotten the coverage they merit. One is the unresolved problem that triggered the shutdown, that of the expiration of Covid-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies. As most of you know, that program increased Obamacare uptake and reduced the number without medical insurance. This pending change comes as Obamacare premiums are set for a big increase, an average of 26%. Both parties have dithered as the annual sign-up period is set to end in December. Trump has offered the no-solution of a clearly inadequate lump-sum payment.
Having said that, some last-minute action may be on the way:
Bipartisan House members float two-year Obamacare subsidy extension https://t.co/7qW2YPnKrU
— POLITICO (@politico) November 21, 2025
By Brad Reed, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
In an op-ed published by the Boston Globe on Thursday, Sanders (I-Vt.) denounced the GOP healthcare plans as “absurd” ideas that “would take our already broken healthcare system and make it even worse.”
Sanders then ripped apart Trump’s plan to simply send Americans a lump sum of money that they could use to negotiate their own healthcare package, which he said would be an “absolute disaster.”
“At a time when more than 60 percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck, a $6,500 check is meaningless in the face of real medical costs,” he argued. “How is someone who needs a $150,000 cancer treatment going to get the care they need with a $6,500 check? What is a pregnant woman supposed to do with a $6,500 check when the average cost of childbirth in America is over $20,000? How is someone who has a heart attack going to be able to afford a $50,000 hospital stay with just $6,500?”
All of this, Sanders continued, would simply cause more people in the US to go bankrupt from trying to afford their medical expenses, which is a situation that does not occur in any nation that has universal healthcare.
“Trump’s approach would lead to more medical bankruptcies, more unaffordable care, and more Americans dying unnecessarily in the richest nation on Earth,” he said.
Sanders argued that the long-term solution for the US healthcare crisis is a single-payer Medicare for All system that he has been proposing for his entire political career.
However, he also acknowledged that this proposal currently lacks support in the US Congress, and he pitched some alternative ideas to serve as a bridge to truly universal healthcare, including extending the enhanced tax credits firstpassed in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan; repealing the nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid that were passed by Republicans earlier this year in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act; and expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing care.
Sanders also challenged the president to support banning stock buybacks and dividends for health insurance companies, which he called a waste of resources that should be devoted to patients’ care.
“The American people know that our healthcare system is broken,” Sanders concluded. “With the country’s increased focus on health, Democrats must be strong in rallying the American people around a rational healthcare system that works for all, not just insurance and drug companies.”
Sanders on Thursday made similar points in an op-ed published by Fox News in which he ripped the GOP for slashing Medicaid funding simply so Big Tech titans like Tesla CEO Elon Musk could have more money to “build millions of robots that will, by the way, decimate good-paying jobs throughout our country.”
Earlier this week, the senator also sent a letter urging Democrats in Congress to support the policies outlined in his new opinion pieces.
In my small business company, we are looking at a 13% increase, which we have decided to eat in the name of employee retention. Given the price of pizza ($50 with 2 beers in Calif), I was expecting worse – of course health insurance is a big ticket item and essential – given that a day admitted to the hospital is easily 10k exclusive of the costs of treatment.
Thank you, Yves, for calling the discussion as wrt health insurance, not health care – which even Sanders confounds.
from his opinion piece “Millions lose their healthcare.” No Bernie – they lose their insurance, but the Obama plan did not provide health care, it provided health insurance where copays and deductibles mean the user still cannot have (afford) health care.
Health insurance is a category mistake that cannot die. Instead, it continues to keep on giving…and making shareholders (Thanks, Milton!) in health insurance companies billions and billions. That is the point of Obamacare, and all of health insurance since Blue Cross went from co-op to for-profit. I am hazy on the details but I remember well the “before” situation. Our Blue Cross family coverage had a yearly deductible of $100 ($332.45 in current dollars). When our older child was born, the only item not covered was $5 per night of five nights because all Family Care Rooms were single-bed, and Blue Cross did not cover them. But even then the local public hospital slipped in an out-of-network provider, which unexpectedly added a few hundred dollars to the bill.
Oh, and the hospital provided the infant car seat as part of the deal.
By this logic, Canada doesn’t have public healthcare because the state merely provides insurance. Only an NHS type system counts, even though everyone in this country gets healthcare for free at point of service.
Even if you want emphasize the importance of this care vs insurance distinction, the headline statement is still obviously true.
I agree with your point – mine was that health insurance only leads to health care if the coverage makes access feasible. For many it does not.
So why does Bernie only use catastrophic health issues as an example, rather than say a MRI with a 300 dollar copay that a person cannot afford for say chronic back pain. Because if you are having a heart attack, the choice of death or bankruptcy / losing your house (even with insurance) is not a real choice.
In many cases you’ll get death and your estate will lose your house in the subsequent bankruptcy…
The entire concept of health “insurance” is confounded. Insurance is historically a pool of money to cover rare events, like ships sinking or homes burning down. Imagine insuring your home if the insurers knew every home would burn to the ground. That’s where every individual is headed–some slowly, some fast. So the costs over a lifetime will vary but cannot be eliminated.
Medicare for All will work because the $ pool will be large and will not be squandered by middlemen (insurers).
I audited insurance companies for 20 years, so please don’t suggest that they are more efficient than the government. Waste is everywhere in the corporate world. And the truly confounded medical coding system for healthcare would be drastically simplified if the profit motive were removed.
Well, I am still waiting on the $600 Biden owes me.
If Trump was to give each person $650,000 or $6.5 million, he would make some sense. But that would be for each year. So, Sanders’s weak tea would be a lot cheaper and would probably be a more durable policy than Trump’s offer.
This old news item about DJT wondering about enlarging Medicare enrollment comes to mind:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/05/trump-asked-why-cant-medicare-simply-cover-everybody.html
Nixon looks better and better with the passage of time:
https://blog.nixonfoundation.org/2009/08/more-on-ted-kennedy-nixon-and-health-care/
Nixon does look better, he signed the EPA, and proposed universal health care. Other than illegally carpet-bombing SE Asia, his record looks pretty good by today’s standards.
Ugh. Sanders, who chose not to advocate fiercely or even at all for universal healthcare doing an ongoing Pandemic. I can’t even read anything that dude says anymore. While Public Health has burned to the ground. We’ll eat these ashes for the rest of our lives. That’s not even hyperbole.
Please get your Sanders Derangment Syndrome seen to.
The LAST time to advocate for a massive fundamental change to the healthcare system is during a healthcare and economic crisis. It would be like trying to go from one boat to another on the roughest part of a whitewater rafting course.
Did you miss, accordingly, that pretty much all of the measures implemented during Peak Covid were temporary, and stil produced a massive deficit? Do you think there would be any appetite for addiing to that, even before getting to the lack of official bandwidth to consider such a matter then? Every time universal care has come up, there was a pre-existing messaging elephant in the room: “Yes, your taxes will go up but your personally-paid health costs will go down, so you will come out ahead.”
This makes the rise of the Confraternity of Saint Luigi understandable.
Though he takes a lot of heat for the essentially ineffective nature of his efforts, Sanders is acting as the figurehead of the pushback against the Neoliberal Dispensation.
Despite the above, when the system itself is captured by special interests, extreme measures become acceptable. Hence, the growing Saint Luigi Underground.
The Masters of the Econiverse are soon to discover that “Move fast and break things” applies equally well to the political sphere as to the economic one.
If I ever participate in the building and use of a guillotine, I want to name it, in flowery letters emblazoned across the top of the device, “Nemesis’ Razor.”
Stay safe.
You reminded me that I hadn’t heard anything about Luigi lately; there is someone whom the elites want to keep OUT of the news.
They affirmed on Friday that they are seeking the death penalty for him . . . on the same day they were all at Cheney’s funeral, so it wouldn’t be front page news.
Reply to ambrit: Ah, yes the proverbial guillotine. We can at least imagine some swift justice. Extreme times call for extreme measures, but unfortunately usually turns very bloody with innocents being killed.
At least Sanders articulates the push-back and has done for years, however he has been criticized for acting as a “sheepdog” for the democratic party and the status-quo. The late Bruce Dixon wrote about this back in 2015, and Margaret Kimberley updated us to include AOC.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie-and-aoc-sheepdog-democrats
If Trump’s freebie doesn’t cover every families’ increased costs then it’s horse manure.
That’s what Sanders should have stated rather than his histrionics about having to pay with the freebie money without staying enrolled which is why it has grown with credits.
Not saying there isn’t a better plan: Move back Medicare eligibility 2 years every year; Get rid of Medicare Advantage crap; Increase Medicare withholdings on paychecks and Tax top
1%