President Donald Trump on Thursday night slammed the Affordable Care Act and demanded that Democrats do something to fix it—a bizarre and nonsensical demand as Republicans have unified control of the federal government.
"As I have said for years, OBAMACARE IS A DISASTER! Rates are going through the roof for really bad healthcare!!! Do something Democrats!!!" Trump wrote in one of his quintessential idiotic Truth Social posts.
A cartoon by Clay Bennett
It is true that health care costs for ACA plans are spiking. Premiums for next year will climb, on average, around 30%, according to an analysis from KFF. But rates are actually expected to more than double for millions of Americans, as the tax credits they receive to afford insurance plans are expiring.
Democrats—who are in the minority and thus have no power to put bills on the floor for a vote—have been pushing Republicans to extend the tax credits to prevent millions of Americans from seeing astronomical health care rate increases.
But Republicans are refusing.
It's likely because Republicans have no plans to make health care more affordable, only plans to repeal Obamacare, strip insurance coverage from the poor people they clearly have utter contempt for, and give carte blanche to drug and insurance companies to raise prices.
So far this year, all Republicans have done on health care is slash Medicaid funding, which will cause millions of the lowest-income Americans to lose their coverage and devastate rural hospitals and long-term care facilities.
House Speaker Mike Johnson claims Republicans have plans to fix health care—which as we reported earlier this week look a lot like the GOP's failed 2017 Obamacare repeal that went up in flames because voters were furious that the plan would have gotten rid of protections for preexisting conditions and cause millions to lose their coverage.
House Speaker Mike Johnson
"No one has worked harder to stand in the way of people getting the healthcare that they need and the food that they need to not go hungry than Speaker Johnson. What he's NOT working hard at is his actual job. Shame on him," Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) wrote in a post on X.
Trump, meanwhile, has promised for nearly a decade that he will repeal and replace the ACA with a better and more affordable health care plan.
Yet he has never released a fully formed proposal, always promising that his plan will come in "two weeks" only to blow past that deadline.
In fact, who can forget his embarrassing debate moment in 2024 when he said he had "concepts" of a health care plan—of which he never made public because he was, as usual, lying.
Trump and Republicans control the government. They could "do something" to make health care more affordable if they wanted. But they refuse because they don't actually care.
When you get your insurance premium hikes, know it is Trump and the GOP who let that happen.
