GOP Repeats Billionaire-Funded Talking Points on Healthcare

“Bad policy,” Republicans echo, parroting billionaire-funded talking points on why Republicans should refuse to extend the ACA subsidies.

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“Bad policy,” Republicans echo, parroting billionaire-funded talking points on why Republicans should refuse to extend the ACA subsidies. In other words, they’ll kill over 50,000 hardworking Americans every year because they have an intellectual distaste for the policy.

Speaker Johnson said in an interview with Fox Business that the ACA subsidies are “bad policy,” and that talking point is being echoed by Republicans and conservatives. It’s a billionaire-funded talking point. Why are billionaires putting so much pressure on lawmakers to steal healthcare away from The People when they are supposed to represent the people?

Let us not forget that the United States is the only “developed,” wealthy, or industrialized nation that does not have a system of universal healthcare for everyone. These billionaires have the power to set the agenda in DC via their influence over lawmakers, who ignore their duty to the people while taking refuge in obviously disingenuous “concern” about the government’s involvement in health policy.

We are to believe billionaires when they say it’s bad policy, never mind that the policy was partly based on Republican ideas including the individual mandate, as soon as Obama’s name was attached to it (via Republican talking points back then, when they were so sure Americans would hate having ore existing conditions covered that they constantly referred to it as “Obamacare”), Republicans hated it.

But it’s hard to rip healthcare away from tens of millions of people, and so they tried lying about “illegals” being on it, but that’s is not accurate.

“Bad Policy”

Paragon Health Institute is putting a ton of pressure on Republicans to let Obamacare subsidies expire, according to reporting by Politico. This group has already had a lot of success as its founder Brian Blase is credited with coming up with the b.s. to justify nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts in Trump/Republicans’ megabill.

Politico says their “vast alumni network” is “spread out across the highest levels of government, from the speaker’s office to the Trump administration.”

“According to tax records obtained by InfluenceWatch, Stand Together — a right-leaning organization connected to Charles Koch — donated $2 million in 2021; the 85 Fund, which has ties to the conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, gave $1 million in 2022,” they added.

Blase is said to be genuine in his belief that the government shouldn’t be involved in healthcare, but has anyone asked him why not? Who else will do it? He “argues the subsidies have proven to be a huge windfall for the health insurance industry,” and yet Republicans have not proposed to regulate the health insurance companies.

In fact, Republicans have rolled back ACA regulations of health insurance companies.

Republicans have rolled back certain ACA regulations, which is expected to increase healthcare costs and make coverage harder to access for millions of Americans. So, gee, that seems like a place they could start if they’re really concerned about the health insurance industry.

Spoiler: They are not.

They made sure insurers could raise out-of-pocket charges. Trump’s ACA Marketplace Integrity and Affordability rule, finalized in 2025, changes how premiums and out-of-pocket costs are calculated:

“Millions of people will pay higher premiums, deductibles, and other health costs starting in just a few months under a rule the Trump Administration has finalized for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces.^[1] While the details are technical, the result is not complicated: the changes will raise the annual cost of health coverage by hundreds of dollars for most of the 23 million people who get coverage through the ACA marketplace by reducing premium tax credits and letting insurers raise out-of-pocket charges.”