If global instability and insecurity isn’t enough to worry average Americans, Trump and his Republicans have ignited an economic hellscape heading into 2026 with tariffs jacking up prices, consumers cutting spending, corporations laying off workers, and Trump cronies’ crypto and AI scams running amok.
The move that will crater Trump’s economic house of cards, however, is about to be sprung in the form of devastating hikes in health insurance premiums and a wave of new back-breaking out of pocket healthcare costs. Way too many families are now looking at costs effectively doubled or more.
And please, don’t think for a second this will only affect millions of people covered by the Affordable Care Act. Insurance pools are contracting, corporations and small businesses that self-insure their employees are getting sticker shock, and workers covered by collective bargaining agreements might want to re-read what their contract says about how inflation affects worker contributions toward healthcare.
The cost of medical care without question presents a clear and present danger to all our wallets, as its costs already exceed the rate of inflation. Under Trump and the Republicans, it’s only going to get worse.
“An aging population, labor pressure driving higher prices, and new high-cost prescription drugs coming to market are expected to contribute to a growth in health spending. Health spending was 17.6% of the U.S. economy in 2023 and is expected to reach 19.7% by 2032,” reports KFF, the highly respected non-profit that provides health policy research, polling, and news.
Welcome to Inflation Nation. In this affordability crisis, thanks to Trump and the Republicans’ incompetence, ineptitude and inaction, everyone is going to get screwed, blued and tattooed, as sailors say.
It seems like eons ago that many of us had to rally to keep Elon Musk and DOGE from messing with Social Security. Lawyers, advocacy groups, activists, elected officials and influencers coalesced last spring to successfully pressure Musk, his DOGE henchman and Trump to get their grubby little hands off Social Security.
Democrats hosted town halls with seniors, editorial pages and social media were flooded with arguments in favor of preserving Social Security and demanding Americans’ privacy be protected from DOGE. Best of all, donors came through and Democrat-aligned groups had the resources to run ads and target retired MAGA voters with beneath-the-radar outreach, making sure Trump’s loyalist supporters were aware they were going to get hit hard by DOGE and Trump’s chicanery. That is how you do it.
Just months later, we found ourselves in a very similar fight, this time to protect millions of Americans from losing their healthcare coverage -- and to avoid the tens of millions more of us from getting whacked with budget-busting rising insurance premiums.
Now that Congress has failed to extend the Affordable Care Act for millions of Americans, the inflation triggered by Trump's illogical floating tariff policy will be exacerbated by calamitous out of pocket healthcare costs for the American people. Coupled with the rising cost of food, clothing and just about anything consumers need or want in their everyday lives, it’s worth repeating that blowout health insurance costs could easily be the out of balance weight that collapses the house of cards that defines the Trump economy.
Republicans have put Americans on a path to a healthcare catastrophe in two parts. In the opening salvo, Republicans cut healthcare spending by $1 trillion in their so-called Big Beautiful Bill through a variety of reductions in funding to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that at least 10 million Americans are losing health insurance because of that move.
And never forget, the cuts to healthcare in the Big Beautiful Bill were to offset Republican tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The second hit on healthcare comes now with Republicans refusing to extend ACA tax credits. If allowed to expire, this will lead to another 4.8 million losing coverage and millions more paying exorbitant premium hikes out of pocket.
It’s important for insured people, who are not in ACA exchanges or receiving Medicaid or Medicare, to realize they are not immune from the financial pain Trump and the Republicans are causing. In the simplest terms, what will happen to health insurance pools is basic math: subtract the money lost from ACA and saved through tax credits, and subtract healthy young people who will opt for no insurance, leaving the pool overstocked in a “death spiral” with older Americans prone to sickness. The result is insurance premium increases necessary to offset the cuts and age imbalance.
In general, rising premiums are a result from “higher prices charged by providers, higher costs for prescription drugs, increasing use of certain services and medications, the impact of new technologies, and the effect of general inflation.” That information is according to a survey by the non-profit Commonwealth Fund.
“Most insurers in our sample also raised rates in response to the scheduled expiration of premium tax credit enhancements,” Commonwealth Fund said.
Johnson worked overtime to deny Democrats and centrist Republicans a House vote on an extension of ACA funds. The legislation was all but certain to fail amid Republican opposition, but as some people tap into savings to pay for inflated healthcare costs it is sure to become a key issue in the 2026 elections as insurance premiums rise.
A new poll from KFF shows the Democrats have backing. “If the tax credits are allowed to expire, most enrollees who want to see the credits extended think either President Trump (41%) or Congressional Republicans (35%) deserve most of the blame,” the KFF poll indicated. Some 84% of ACA enrollees – including nearly all Democrats and about seven in ten Republicans – say Congress should extend the tax credits, the poll showed. The graphic below our full text shows that too many American families are already feeling the pinch.
We all need to anticipate healthcare costs as a driving issue throughout this year, and spread the word. Encouraging Democrats, and exposing the villainous vindictive Republicans responsible for the chaos, begins this week and right through the next election. By now, most of us have figured out that we are locked in a perpetual series of fights against Trump, the GOP-led Congress, Tech Bros and affiliated miscreants – at least and until we defeat the greedy, the self-serving, and the fascists.
We’re all in.
