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affordable care act
Trump's Health Plan Is Doomed to Fail—We Need Medicare for All
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s concepts of a plan don't even begin to reverse the damage he caused when he made massive cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires.
Jan 17, 2026
President Donald Trump’s new “Great Health Care Plan” is anything but.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s concepts of a plan fail to even begin to reverse the damage he caused when he made massive cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires. Now, Trump and his Republican allies are trying to cover up the gaping wound they have created with a Band-Aid. At the same time, Americans are desperate for relief from Trumpflation, including rapidly rising healthcare costs.
Too many Americans struggle to get the healthcare they need even with insurance. A recent poll found that more than 1-in-3 adults in the US had skipped or postponed needed healthcare in the last 12 months because they couldn’t afford the cost. The situation is even more dire for the uninsured, with 75% of uninsured adults under age 65 reporting going without needed care because of the cost.
Shutdown negotiations and subsequent scattershot health ideas from the White House and Republicans in Congress show they have no real idea what to do when it comes to actually bringing down the cost of healthcare in America. President Trump’s half-baked plan appears doomed to fail and doesn’t even have the support of Republicans in Congress. Plus the only alternate Republican plans for healthcare that currently exist strictly serve corporations and fail to provide relief to patients.
Every other comparably wealthy country has some version of universal healthcare, and none of them would trade their systems for the wasteful and haphazard US system.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has undertaken efforts to further privatize Medicare, including adding Medicare Advantage-style prior authorization to traditional Medicare, risking access to care for seniors by delaying and denying needed care. It also plans to place Medicare enrollees in private health contracts, similar to Medicare Advantage, where the corporations in charge are incentivized to place corporate profits ahead of patient needs.
Americans are angry about our broken healthcare system, and they want a comprehensive solution. One recent survey found that 65% of voters support a Medicare for All-style system. A similar number of voters said that the federal government right now does too little to ensure Americans can afford the healthcare they need. An in-depth study that looked across four years of data found that more than a quarter of adults went without needed care or experienced cost burdens for care they did receive over the four-year period of the study. The high cost of care and limited coverage leaves tens of millions of Americans without adequate coverage, and millions of them end up saddled with medical debt, something unheard of in other comparably wealthy countries. We need to take bold but commonsense action to finally guarantee that everyone in the US can get the healthcare they need.
Providers and hospitals are also desperate for reform. The cost of doing business in our broken healthcare system is causing hospitals to close or shutter crucial services. Providers are facing huge challenges as greedy profiteers, including private equity companies, gobble up their hospitals and medical practices and impose cost-cutting measures in the service of maximizing profits.
Fortunately, Medicare for All would address all of these issues and finally put the health of Americans ahead of corporate profits. Medicare for All would guarantee that everyone in the US can get the care they need when they need it, without financial barriers or hoops to jump through, and would be cheaper than our current system while providing coverage that is better than any commercial health insurance plan. It would do this by taking Medicare—one of the most popular parts of our healthcare system—improving it by expanding available services, ending out-of-pocket costs, and expanding it to everyone in the country.
Corporations and certain members of Congress purposefully make such a commonsense system sound like an impossible leap from America’s current broken system in order to stifle American dissatisfaction with our healthcare and keep shareholders happy. But every other comparably wealthy country has some version of universal healthcare, and none of them would trade their systems for the wasteful and haphazard US system.
We continue to see more members of Congress signing on to support Medicare for All in both the House and the Senate, and more municipalities supporting resolutions in favor of Congress passing Medicare for All. The time has come to unite around Medicare for All and build the movement that can finally make it a reality.
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Critics Say Trump 'Joke Healthcare Plan' Nothing But a 'Con' of the American People
“In the longer term, we must finally pass Medicare for All, an actually great healthcare plan," said one campaigner.
Jan 15, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a "Great Healthcare Plan" that critics panned for being "short on details," arguing that—contrary to White House claims—the scheme will lead to higher consumer costs and less care.
Trump called on Congress to pass his proposal, which he said will "lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, hold big insurance companies accountable, and maximize price transparency."
However, the advocacy group Protect Our Care called the proposal a "joke healthcare plan" and a "sad attempt to continue gaslighting the American people."
"Since taking office, President Trump and his cronies in Congress have taken a hammer to American healthcare to enrich billionaires and big corporations," the group said. "First, they slashed $1 trillion dollars from Medicaid, and then they doubled, tripled, and quadrupled health premiums for nearly 22 million Americans already struggling to get by in Trump’s unaffordable America."
"Now that it is clear that busting working families’ budgets is bad policy and bad politics, Trump is scrambling for a lifeline," Protect Our Care added. "The solution to ending the Trump-GOP premium disaster isn’t rocket science. It is the three-year, clean extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits that the House passed. This commonsense solution that Trump callously threatened to veto is now sitting on Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s (SD) desk."
Trump’s new health care plan doesn’t help people facing skyrocketing ACA premiums.No fix for affordability. No solution for families struggling to stay covered.Just another empty framework while costs climb.
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— Protect Our Care (@protectourcare.org) January 15, 2026 at 12:57 PM
The Senate—which last month voted down a similar three-year-extension to what House lawmakers passed—has yet to schedule a vote on the extension. An attempt to advance the bill through a unanimous consent agreement was blocked by Republicans on Wednesday.
Congressman Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Thursday that “Trump’s half-baked healthcare ‘plan’ is a con that does nothing to help Americans facing soaring costs and would raise healthcare expenses while cutting coverage."
"That’s no surprise from a president who is taking healthcare away from 15 million Americans to pay for tax breaks for billionaires," he added. "If the White House is serious about lowering healthcare costs right now, they should support legislation to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that already passed the House with bipartisan support. The American people deserve real solutions, not gimmicks.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that a three-year extension of the enhanced ACA premium tax credits would increase the number of Americans with health insurance by millions, including approximately 3 million in 2027 and 4 million in 2028.
Eagan Kemp, healthcare policy advocate at the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement Thursday that “Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan is impressive only in the fact that it isn’t great, wouldn’t substantively improve healthcare, and isn’t even detailed enough to be considered a plan."
“Trump and his cronies have had more than a decade to come up with something beyond ‘concepts of a plan’ but have failed time and time again," Kemp continued. "The American people are suffering under a broken healthcare system that has been made worse by Trump and his MAGA allies."
“By passing tax cuts for billionaires and paying for them through healthcare cuts for tens of millions of people, Trump and Republicans showed their disdain for everyday Americans. In the short run, the Senate must follow the lead of the House and pass a clean three-year extension of the ACA subsidies," he said.
“In the longer term," Kemp added, "we must finally pass Medicare for All, an actually great healthcare plan, to finally guarantee everyone in the US can get the care they need throughout their lives without financial barriers."
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'There Is No Excuse': Senate Slammed for Punting on Bill to Restore ACA Subsidies
"Senate Republicans must pass this bipartisan legislation today, end the Republican healthcare crisis, and deliver immediate relief to American families," said one campaigner.
Jan 13, 2026
A week away from open enrollment ending in most states, 17 GOP members of the US House of Representatives helped Democrats pass a bill to restore lapsed Affordable Care Act premium tax credits—but senators have declined to act with that same urgency, and the deadline for many Americans to make coverage decisions for 2026 is Thursday.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), a lead negotiator for a bipartisan Senate group working on a compromise for the expired ACA subsidies, told Politico on Tuesday that the legislative text will no longer be ready this week. Instead, it's now expected the last week of January—after not only the upper chamber's upcoming recess, but also when millions of people nationwide will have already had to choose a plan on an ACA marketplace or to forgo health insurance coverage due to surging premiums.
In response to the reporting, Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal highlighted in a statement that "millions of Americans are paying sky-high health insurance premiums after congressional Republicans ended the healthcare tax cuts working families depend on. A three-year extension has already cleared the House with bipartisan support."
"Any delay needlessly sticks millions of working people with higher costs; There is no excuse," Tal added. "Senate Republicans must pass this bipartisan legislation today, end the Republican healthcare crisis, and deliver immediate relief to American families."
Tal, Democratic lawmakers, labor leaders, and other supporters of reviving the ACA subsidies had similarly demanded Senate action following last Thursday's 230-196 vote—which came after multiple Republican lawmakers broke with party leadership and signed a Democratic discharge petition that enabled the bill's backers to bypass House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Moreno's remarks on the Senate group's "punt," as Politico put it, came after Axios reported that congressional Democratic leadership on Sunday sent Republicans a proposal to renew ACA subsidies for three years, "paired with extensions of other expiring health programs."
Axios also noted that President Donald Trump told reporters late Sunday that he "might" veto a subsidy extension. Whether any will reach his desk, though, remains unclear—and even if one does, it is increasingly likely it'll be after Americans have to make choices about 2026 coverage. Amid the uncertainty over future ACA subsidies, Illinois and Pennsylvania extended the enrollment period through February 1.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday that nearly 22.8 million people have signed up for 2026 individual market health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplaces—around 19.9 million returning consumers and 2.8 million new ones.
The nonprofit Community Catalyst pointed out that the overall enrollment figure is down by about 1.4 million from last year. Michelle Sternthal, the advocacy group's interim senior director of policy and strategy, said that "these numbers confirm what people across the country are already feeling: We are in a healthcare affordability crisis."
"When Congress failed to extend the enhanced premium tax credits, premiums spiked overnight—from $921 to $1,998, or $121 to $373. Families are facing impossible choices," Sternthal stressed in her Tuesday statement.
"These outcomes aren't random. They are the direct result of policy decisions that have weakened our healthcare system over time," she continued. "Coverage works. Stability matters. Healthcare is not a luxury—it is shared infrastructure. When people are healthy, our communities and our economy are stronger. Congress created this crisis, and Congress has the power—and the responsibility—to act now."
The drawn-out debate over the ACA tax credits on Capitol Hill has spurred broader critiques of the US healthcare system, including fresh demands for Medicare for All. Even before the subsidies expired at the end of last year, the typical working US family spent $3,960 on healthcare annually, including premiums and out-of-pocket costs, according to research released Tuesday by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
"Ten percent of working families paid more than $14,800 on insurance premiums and other out-of-pocket healthcare expenses," says the CEPR report, which is based on 2024 data. "And more than 1 of every 8 workers (13.3%) are in families that spent greater than 10% of their annual income on healthcare."
The publication warns that "healthcare costs are rising faster than inflation, and future increases in premiums, ACA costs, and Medicaid cutbacks will worsen the burden."
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