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medicare for all
With Premiums Set to Rise, a Reminder: 'Medicare for All Would Save $650 Billion' Annually
"Your periodic reminder that health insurance is not healthcare," said one advocate. "It's an unnecessary middleman designed to restrict access to healthcare and exploit people for profit."
Sep 12, 2025
Health insurance premiums are set to skyrocket in the coming months, which has prompted many progressive advocates to remind Americans that a less expensive alternative is possible.
As The Washington Post reported on Friday, the cost of health insurance is "on track for their biggest jump in at least five years" thanks in part to the actions of congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump.
Citing new research from KFF, the Post noted that most people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act are set to see their premiums rise by over 75% unless Congress steps in and renews enhanced subsidies that had been passed into law under the American Rescue Plan in 2021.
Congressional Democrats have said that they will not vote to fund the government past its current rapidly approaching deadline unless Republicans in Congress agree to an extension of the enhanced health insurance tax credits.
The Post report also pointed to Trump's trade war threats as a justification being cited by insurers to raise rates. Even though Trump has yet to actually levy tariffs on pharmaceutical imports, his Commerce Department is currently investigating their impact and the president himself has said that the tariffs could be as much as 250%.
"Some insurers, in legal filings with regulators, have said explicitly that the expected tariffs were raising insurance prices," the paper explained. "A document from United Healthcare of New York states that, to account for 'uncertainty regarding tariffs and/or the onshoring of manufacturing and their impact on total medical costs, most notably on pharmaceuticals, a total price impact of 3.6% is built into the initially submitted rate filing.'"
Given all this, longtime supporters of Medicare for All encouraged their fellow Americans to consider a different way of handling healthcare.
"Next year, Americans will see the biggest jump in health insurance costs in 15 years," commented former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "Meanwhile, the six largest health insurers raked in more than $31 billion in net income last year. Still not sure if we need Medicare for All?"
Warren Gunnels, a staffer for US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), cited studies by the Congressional Budget Office and Yale to argue that Medicare for All would be a net money saved.
"Your daily reminder: Medicare for All would save $650 billion and 68,000 lives each and every year while providing comprehensive healthcare to every man, woman, and child with no premiums, no deductibles, and no co-payments," he wrote.
Melanie D'Arrigo, the executive director of Campaign for New York Health, argued that the best part of Medicare for All is that it would simply make the private insurance industry obsolte.
"Your periodic reminder that health insurance is not healthcare," she said. "It's an unnecessary middleman designed to restrict access to healthcare and exploit people for profit. The fiscal and moral path forward is universal healthcare with Medicare for All."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) reacted to the news of insurance price hikes with a simple message.
"Medicare for All. Now," he wrote.
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A Compact for American Workers to Share This Labor Day
Most of the long-overdue planks on this Domestic Compact for America are supported by both liberal and conservative families who live, work, and raise their children here.
Sep 01, 2025
Running on the following Domestic Compact for America is a winning election strategy for candidates at the local, state, and national levels.
Most of these long-overdue programs are supported by both liberal and conservative families who live, work, and raise their children, facing unaddressed necessities of life and livelihoods.
Labor Day celebrations should be about more than department store sales and clambakes. America’s labor unions, at both the national and local levels, should circulate this agenda widely on Labor Day, because it is also a Compact for American Workers.
This agenda is being sent to Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO (see the letter sent to her on August 27, 2024), and to the presidents of other major unions, including those representing postal workers, flight attendants, electrical workers, autoworkers, steelworkers, service workers, nurses, textile workers, and agricultural workers.
You might ask yourself: How many of these protections and benefits is US President Donald Trump opposing? These are good yardsticks by which to compare his deceptive rhetoric with his misdeeds.
The basic question is, whose side are you on? The key elements of the Compact are:
- Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to at least $15 per hour, benefiting 25 million workers.
- Raising all the Social Security benefits, frozen for over 45 years, paying for it by increasing the Social Security tax on the wealthy, benefiting over 60 million elderly. This was supported by about 200 House Democrats in 2022 but was blocked by the Democratic Speaker from going to the floor. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), the bill’s champion, can provide further explanation.
- Restoring taxes on the very under-taxed super rich and corporations (85% approval).
- Establishing a children’s tax credit, cutting child poverty in half, with over 60 million children benefiting. Very popular with parents regardless of their political party affiliations.
- Instituting Medicare for All, safer, more efficient, and much less stressful than our current approach to healthcare.
- Cracking down on corporate crooks stealing consumer dollars, wages, and worker pensions.
- Adopting social safety nets long available in Western Europe and Canada.
- Passing labor law reforms put forth decades ago. (See my column on Taft Hartley at Nader.org)
- Investing in crumbling public services and infrastructures.
- Paying for the above by restoring taxes on the very under-taxed super rich and large corporations and by ending huge corporate welfare giveaways and debloating the runaway, unaudited military budget.
Why has the Democratic Party declined to lead with such an agenda, which has been proposed for years by various citizen groups? (See winningamerica.net.)
One reason is special interest campaign money. Another is that the Democratic Party contracts out many of its campaigns to corporate-conflicted consulting firms that have long pushed weak messaging that leads voters to keep wondering what the party stands for. These consulting firms know the answer—have the party do what is necessary to outraise the GOP in campaign contributions from corporate PACs, the super wealthy, and Wall Street titans.
When the labor union chiefs just write campaign checks to the Democratic Party without demanding an authentic, publicly visible agenda for workers, the pressure is off the party’s leadership to cease being a corporate party or to recruit younger leaders to provide needed energy from the Democratic National Committee down to the grassroots. Without this energy, there is no serious effort to mobilize informed voters who demand these changes and overdue redirections. (See Roots Action, founded by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon.)
Here is to a more vibrant, respectful LABOR DAY.
For more information about what workers can do to advance their interests, see my book Civic Self-Respect—Chapter 2: “I, the Worker.”
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Beware the Trump-GOP Junk Health Insurance Plans
The Trump administration is refusing to enforce a Biden-era rule limiting junk short-term health plans that are notorious for charging more or denying coverage altogether for preexisting conditions.
Aug 26, 2025
With the Trump administration rolling back essential health insurance protections and rejecting a national, single-payer health insurance program, America’s race to the bottom continues full steam ahead for millions of Americans with preexisting health conditions.
The administration will now amend the Biden-era rule that limited the duration of short-term plans to no more than four months, and says it will not enforce the current rule, including the time restrictions and new consumer notification requirements, in the interim. It is refusing to enforce a Biden-era rule limiting junk short-term health plans that are notorious for charging more or denying coverage altogether for people with conditions like asthma, diabetes, and cancer.
Protect Our Care chair Leslie Dach issued the following statement:
At a time when the healthcare system is already in crisis, [US President] Donald Trump is launching another attack on people with preexisting conditions. Short-term junk plans are allowed to deny coverage, drop people when they get sick, and exclude lifesaving coverage such as prescription drugs and hospital care, leaving families with sky-high bills and nowhere else to turn. This is a direct attack on Americans with preexisting conditions, putting their health and financial security at serious risk. It seems the president has forgotten the 2018 midterm election.
The Trump administration sees no need for any regulation regarding junk plans and fixed indemnity excepted benefits coverage at the federal level. Don’t bother, says Trump, with the need to promote consumer understanding of coverage options and ensure consumers do not mistakenly enroll in “Short-Term Limited Duration Insurance” (STLDI) and fixed indemnity expecting benefits coverage as a substitute for comprehensive coverage. And of course don’t worry about the prevalence of aggressive and deceptive sales and marketing practices on television, the internet, and elsewhere by all the rapacious minions of the health insurance industry. A big “hello” from Broadway Joe Namath!
In service to the health insurance industry, junk plans always prioritize profit over people. While they may deliver some small, short-sighted, fleeting economic benefits, the long-term costs—to individuals, families, communities—are far greater because lifesaving healthcare services are threatened for those who need them the most.
In 2018, The US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health, and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, concluded that the GOP-Trump “Short-Term Limited Duration Insurance” (STLDI) plans present a significant threat to the health and financial well-being of American families. Short Term Limited Insurance (STLDI) plans include limited protection for both catastrophic medical costs and routine medical care; it is unclear what kind of value consumers are getting for their premium dollars, other than a false sense of security. The committee staff recommended that federal legislation subject STLDI plans to the all of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) interlocking consumer protections, including guaranteed issue and renewability, the ban on preexisting condition exclusions, coverage of the essential health benefits, the medical loss ratio, and the prohibition on rescissions. Subjecting STLDI plans to all of the ACA’s consumer protections at a federal level will ensure adequate protection for consumers.
Building on other efforts to further sabotage and undermine quality healthcare insurance for all, President Trump and the GOP had previously proposed very similar “association health insurance plans” that let small businesses band together and insure themselves or buy insurance as a group. Association health plans have a bad track record over the past 10 years, with dozens of court cases and enforcement actions by federal and state officials. Many turned into criminal cases involving fraud, embezzlement, diversion of premiums, and mismanagement, leaving employers and employees with millions of dollars in unpaid medical bills.
Good policy for big insurance companies means bad policies for hapless patients and families. What’s good for the shark is bad for the minnow!
Just like the latest proposed “STLDI” plans, Trump’s previous association health plans were not required to provide essential health benefits like mental health, substance abuse treatment, and drug coverage, and claim they are exempt from all state insurance laws under Trump’s executive order. When toxic plans like this are approved, it’s clear that our health insurance system is broken. Like a cracked pipe, money gushes into our healthcare system but steadily leaks out. Money is siphoned into the advertising budgets of private-profit insurance companies and the army of corporate bureaucrats working to deny claims. Even more dollars are soaked up by the pockets of insurance CEOs who have collectively earned $9.8 billion since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. Nearly a third of all of our healthcare dollars go to something other than healthcare.
Another example is the deceptive appeal of Trump’s profitable “copper catastrophic” plans. They are stunningly inadequate plans that have very low premiums because their actuarial value is only a pathetic 50%, giving the illusion of health insurance coverage. They cover an average of about half of healthcare costs. In 2017, the deductible for these plans was $7,150. These plans will work great if you never get sick or have an accident.
Offering only deteriorating financial protection, especially those with larger deductibles, this downward trend can produce severe adverse consequences for the physical, mental, and financial health of the insured. Because of the Spartan nature of the newly proposed STLDI catastrophic plans, the adverse consequences can be anticipated to be even more severe.
The House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce concluded that Trump-GOP plans are simply a very bad deal for consumers. They list six concerns about the Trump administration’s policy of expanding these dangerous, unregulated plans that presents a threat to the health and financial well-being of American families, particularly in light of the current Covid-19 public health emergency.
Six Reasons Trump’s “STLDI” Policy Is Dangerous
- Short Term Limited Duration Insurance (STLDI) plans systematically discriminate against individuals with preexisting conditions, and against women.
- These plans offer bare bones coverage, including major coverage limitations that are not always clear in marketing materials, making it difficult for consumers to know what they are buying.
- STLDI plans offer wholly inadequate protection against catastrophic medical costs.
- Some STLDI plans impose draconian coverage limitations even for illnesses, injuries, and conditions arising after a consumer purchases a policy.
- On average, less than half of the premium dollars collected from consumers are spent on medical care.
- STLDI plans engage in heavy-handed back-end tactics to avoid paying medical claims that do arise.
The GOP-Trump latest absurd plan shows once again the fallacy that we can take beneficial policies and detrimental policies and combine them into a reasonable compromise. Good policy for big insurance companies means bad policies for hapless patients and families. What’s good for the shark is bad for the minnow!
Bad policies cannot be neutralized by political accommodations. Under a well-designed, improved Medicare for All national insurance program, catastrophic plans like these would not exist. The sooner we get to single-payer health insurance program, Medicare for All, the better it will be for all of us—meanwhile, caveat emptor, buyer beware!
Take Action Now
- CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS asking them to oppose and end Trump’s STLDI plans immediately.
- Most importantly, ask them to strongly support new legislation now filed in Congress, The Medicare for All (M4A) Act of 2025.
Special Note On M4A ACT-2025
a). The Medicare for All Act of 2025, now filed in Congress, would provide health coverage to every US resident—including comprehensive medical, dental, vision, mental health, and reproductive care—with no out-of-pocket costs, copays, or deductibles.
b). By eliminating waste and corporate profiteering in healthcare, the bill would save hundreds of billions annually that could be invested in actual healthcare, resulting in better, more equitable health outcomes.
c). By covering everyone without the copays, deductibles, and insurance networks that deter care and drive medical debt, M4A would achieve universal and comprehensive coverage, while assuring real choice of physician, mental health, health professional, and hospital.
d). By eliminating profiteering and wasteful insurance bureaucracy (plus the administrative costs that bureaucracy inflicts on healthcare providers), it would—according to the Congressional Budget Office—free up $400 billion annually in funds that could pay for the cost of such coverage expansions and improvements.
e). Medicare-for-All could also effect a much-needed shift in the ownership of care away from increasingly dominant private corporations to public ownership by Americans and their communities.
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