Are Republicans Actually Greasing The Skids For Medicare For All?

[turbinetree]

Trump trashes ‘big, fat, rich insurance companies.’ Progressives: ‘Wait until we tell you about Medicare for All!'

By Jon Queally — November 20, 2025

President Donald Trump on Tuesday proclaimed he would not sign any fix to the nation's healthcare crisis that would send money to what he termed, in all capital letters, as the "BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH"—and progressives did not hesitate to point out that by taking for-profit, private insurers out of the healthcare equation, one would quickly—if they cared about covering more people with less money—be left with something more akin to the kind of universal, publicly-supported healthcare systems that most nations in the developed world already enjoy.

"Just wait until we tell you about Medicare for All," said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for the US Senate in Michigan, in response to Trump's Truth Social post

The president has been openly railing against the insurance companies that benefit from federal subsidies that are central to the healthcare plans made available on exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but his solution—a nebulous call for direct payments to individuals who could then somehow purchase "THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER INSURANCE" with those same federal dollars.

https://crooksandliars.com/2025/11/are-republicans-actually-greasing-skids

[Lovie777]

1. No..............

[rampartd]

4. hell no

the conservative health care system is closer to Haiti than canada.

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. Not intentionally, but they are.

The ACA subsidies are another step in the right direction towards MFA, and removing them will trigger widespread suffering across party lines.

Dems will have an opening to push to restore the subsidies, and down the road, to “expand” them to include more/all people.

The slogans write themselves: “ why should corporations get all the subsidies? Now subsidies can go directly to the people themselves” (but not the $2000 checks Trump wants)

[rampartd]

5. there will be no money to do this.

more trump monuments to build! more supporters to reward with lucrative contracts.

[Fiendish Thingy]

9. How do you think the national debt doubled from $16 trillion to $32 trillion?

Those stimulus checks with Trump’s signature on them didn’t come out of the White House petty cash fund.

[rampartd]

11. there will be no more debt after trump

just interest payments.

we will have no credit and no collateral, a trump appointed federal reserve with 10 year terms, a trump appointed court , and plenty of dead enders in congress. the first femocratic president will be trashed repeatedly and impeached often.

look at haiti for our future. maybe president jr. as maga remembers their golden age.

[mike_c]

10. the very fact that subsidies are necessary shows...

...that the ACA is failed legislation, although I suppose that depends upon what we thought it's intended purpose was. If it was meant to enhance fair, affordable access to healthcare for all Americans, it failed from day one, IMO. It embraces wealth care modeled on the rapacious mercies of insurance industry parasites and explicitly rejects publicly funded healthcare as provided by government in much of the rest of the developed world. The simple circumstances that healthcare is not available under the ACA unless you (or someone else) buys it from insurance companies, and we find ourselves needing to subsidize even that to satisfy the for-profit healthcare gatekeepers demonstrate the ACA's failure. The ACA is just lipstick on a pig, and we're all falling for the scam.

On the other hand, if the ACA was meant to codify our national insistence that Americans don't deserve unimpeded health care, but everyone must nonetheless tithe for insurance executives, well then, in that case it's a resounding success. Health insurance profits are fantastic!

My wife and I receive free-to-us health care, the end case for Medicare-for-all. We have a union pension that pays our medicare premiums (parts A and B) and also provides commercial supplemental insurance, vision, dental, Part D, etc. If CALPERS can do it, the U.S. Treasury certainly can too, for substantially less money than Americans are already paying for healthcare. That last, supplemental link in the chain could easily be completed by American government, either by *very* closely regulating the behavior of health insurers or simply by providing services as a non-profit function of government on an NHS sort of model, and let the capitalist market drive the for-profit healthcare industry into history. The current ACA primarily protects the industry's for-profit stranglehold on health care.

[rampartd]

12. it requires coverage for pre existing comditions and removed the lifetime maximums whicj we will now all face.

as inflation must continue.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. I just think it's bluster because he can't get in on insuring anything

Insurance is risk management, and if you are able to shoulder risk by accepting premiums and guarantee to pay in the event of loss - get this now - you have to have ACTUAL assets to pay the claims. Not fake assets, not fluctuating assets, not additional hedges except for reinsurers, but actual financial wherewithal that are stable. And not stable coins.

[leftstreet]

6. +1

That makes total sense. The breadth of his economic knowledge is limited to what does/doesn't or has/hasn't benefited him personally.

[Hotler]

7. Only fools will trust the fascist. They're back stabbers. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. LOL. I refer you to Betteridge's Law

" (journalism) An adage stating that any headline ending in a question mark can be correctly answered by the word "no"."

Republicans looking for a scapegoat to get them out of a current mess in no way means "they are going to stick with this excuse". Jeez, hasn't Crooks and Liars learned anything about Republicans in the past 30 years or so?