Photo by Piron Guillaume

Amidst the current budget debate in Congress over subsidizing private insurance in our failing health system, the Trump administration recently handed 20 billion dollars to prop up the failing government in Argentina.

President Javier Milei has invoked a slash and burn “libertarian” model which drastically cuts social spending and lets corporations and the wealthy run rampant – all under the guise of cutting waste.

This model has miserably failed in Argentina but Trump hopes his 20 billion in corporate welfare will temporarily stabilize the situation and let Milei win the upcoming election.

While Democrats like Elizaberh Warren and some Republicans rightfully criticize Trump for bailing out the failing economy of Argentina, what we have regarding the impending shutdown are the Democrats on one side who want to (once again) continue massive tax subsidies to prop up the billion dollar insurance industry and the Republicans who want these same corporations to have unfettered control over your healthcare. Such is the woeful state of the people’s interest and political debate in the USA.

Both parties are wed to privatized corporate-run healthcare despite its continuing decades-long collapse. Its delivery is run by for-profit interests and governed by sympathetic toadies of the two party corporate duopoly which leaves the public interest and real health priorities without any effective voice. Profits are in the billions while millions have no coverage and tens of millions more are in medical debt. Insurers push “junk insurance” packages of high deductibles, restrictive networks, out of network penalties, and costly premiums that essentially limit coverage.

All of these problems are unnecessary but essential features to the functioning of a system prioritizing profit over health. As a result, Americans pay twice as much for healthcare compared to other industrialized nations and rank miserably low on all health indicators from comparable nations.

Patchwork System Prioritizes Profits

When Biden in 2023 declared the pandemic was over and cut 20 million from extended Medicaid coverages, he worked to transfer billions in tax subsidies to profitable health insurers under the ACA as a substitute coverage for Medicaid cuts.

A major debate in Congress over healthcare is now brewing as 20 plus million Americans covered by the misnamed Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) are scheduled to lose their tax subsidized coverage via the ACA “exchanges” in 2026 due to the expiration of these insurance subsidies and new restrictions in the Big Beautiful Bill.

This faux debate will pit Democrats demanding billions in continued tax payer subsidies to maintain insurers’ profits (without them they will fail) while Republicans will counter with demands to end subsidies via “skimpier” insurance plans covering even less in order to maintain profits for insurers. Both approaches rely on the dysfunctional “market”-based delivery system.

Compounding the problem and left out of the Congressional “healthcare debate” is the disastrous impact the scheduled 18% median healthcare insurance premium increase for 2026 will have on the more than 160 million Americans covered by employer based healthcare. Also left out are the scheduled billions in Medicaid cuts to recipients and hospitals threatening mass closures.

Multiple Crises Demand A New Paradigm

Their Profits: Our Lives

Despite its documented failure, for-profit insurance continues to be the “go-to” argument of the political duopoly, mainstream media, and the medical establishment. Why not? Insurer profits since the ACA topped $371 Billion while on the opposite end, a Kaiser Family Foundation annual survey of employers, shows that the average annual premium for family coverage rose from $13,770 in 2010 to $25,572 in 2024.

The mainstream media propaganda machine is drunk on cash from the “direct-to-consumer” advertising from health care insurers and PhRMA. Most advanced countries whose governments pay a fraction of the costs for needed medicines do not permit this type of advertising. All of this is wasted expenditures that serve no public health need.

Despite this barrage of media propaganda and the abandonment of single payer by liberal non-profits and almost all of the top labor officials, the public support for a national single payer system remains strong. This has always been and remains the foundation of all movements for economic and social justice.

What more is needed to understand the US for-profit healthcare delivery system can’t be tinkered with or fixed with public subsidies, eliminating “bad corporate actors” or with incrementalism? It needs to be replaced by a national not for-profit system run based on the elementary public health needs of the people.

Billions to Bailout a Foreign Government and Insurers

Austerity for the People

The Trump administration thinks nothing of throwing a 20 Billion dollar bailout to the failed market oriented “libertarian right wing” government in Argentina that has sold off its national resources, destroyed its retirement programs, and impoverished its citizens. A clear case of US foreign election meddling.

The Trump administration is also willing to provide Argentina with credit via the Treasury’s exchange stabilization fund and to buy Argentina’s dollar bonds.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Argentina: “The plan is as long as President Milei continues with his strong economic policies to help him, to bridge him to the election, we are not going to let a disequilibrium in the market cause a backup in his substantial economic reforms.

The US domestic equivalent of this obsequious prostration to a bankrupt foreign government run by and in the interests of big money is the Trump Administration and Congress’s embrace of for-profit health care insurers.

Instead of faux choices between bailouts of billion dollar health insurers or the ‘“tough love” allegiance to corporate health care there should be an honest debate and real negotiations to end the failed healthcare business model and replace it with a national single payer healthcare delivery system. Who in Congress will stand up and speak in the public interest? How can this death spiral of for profit healthcare be stopped?

Stand for Nothing Fall for Less

We are in dangerous times. Massive political dissatisfaction and confusion reign combined with relentless attacks that threaten our civil and organizing rights. Decades of gains are threatened. All public services are on the block for elimination or privatization. This is all exacerbated by a profound political disconnect that leaves public needs defenseless. A people’s program and leadership are needed to ignite a real alternative of grassroots organizing for a popular counter attack.

We must all rise to the occasion. Call out this wholesale move to destroy our elementary rights and the meager public programs while the wealthy are shielded from responsibility or consequences.

The public is restless. We must act confidently and with a clear focus on the root cause of our problems.

Now is the time to demand real solutions. Demand Congress act in the people’s interests. End for profit healthcare. Pass H.R. 3421-Medicare For All Act

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