Thom Hartmann

Progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann talked about Campaign 2026 and the progressive movement.

Thom Hartmann on Campaign 2026 and the Progressive Movement Progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann talked about Campaign 2026 and the progressive movement.

The Trump administration has a bold new idea for Americans who can’t afford their medical bills: borrow the money from the very insurance company that’s already refusing to pay them.

Under a White House proposal floated this week, cash-strapped patients would take out loans from their health insurers to cover the bills those same insurers helped inflate. It’s a scheme one Democratic congresswoman warned could “ruin people’s finances” while handing insurers a shiny new incentive to deny your care and then collect a fortune in interest on your desperation. I suppose we should admire the elegance of the GOP’s newest scam: the massive Republican donors win when you get sick, win again when you borrow, and win a third time when you default and they get a court to take away your house to repay your loan. That’s not a healthcare system that any other country in the world would recognize; it’s a payday-loan window with a stethoscope hanging in it.

And before anyone wrings their hands about how we “simply can’t afford” something humane like Medicare for All, note that the Republican increase in Pentagon spending this year alone dwarfs the entire projected Social Security shortfall for 2034, which is the very “crisis” they keep invoking to justify gutting your retirement. We have bottomless money for missiles and putting Trump‘s name on everything, but not a nickel for Grandma’s knee replacement, and somehow the corporate media never quite finds the column inches to mention it.

Forty-five years after Reagan taught us that government was the problem, we’ve finally built a GOP-run government that fulfills his claim.

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