When the Bill Comes Due: Trump’s Big Ugly Health Care Betrayal Is About to Hit Your Wallet
Your Health Insurance Is About to Explode—And Republicans Are Betting You’re Too Dumb to Notice
You can feel it already, can’t you? The great Republican disappearing act is about to begin.
Picture it: the same Senators and Representatives who were all smiles when they voted to blow up the Affordable Care Act now scurrying behind office doors and pretending they have no idea why your health insurance bill just doubled.
Let’s be clear: they knew exactly what they were doing.
They had the numbers in front of them. Nonpartisan estimates from the Urban Institute, a respected policy think tank, projected that ending the expanded ACA subsidies alone would jack up consumer premiums by as much as 63% nationwide. And when you pile on the rest of the Big Ugly Bill’s sabotage—like reintroducing junk insurance and cutting Medicaid expansion—some states see increases topping 50%.
If you think I’m exaggerating, here’s what the Urban Institute and Congressional Budget Office have documented in their modeling:
West Virginia: projected average premium increase of +53%
Wyoming: +50%
Alaska: +49%
Mississippi: +47%
Alabama: +44%
Even the “least impacted” states—Massachusetts, Vermont, California—still face 20–25% higher premiums.
And here’s the part that hits everybody: when 16 million Americans lose affordable coverage, uncompensated care explodes. According to the Urban Institute, hospitals will see nearly $278 billion more in unpaid bills over the next decade. That gets passed straight into higher insurance premiums for everyone else, including people who get coverage through their employer.
So yes—your premiums are going up, too.
While all this is happening, the big news outlets are too busy covering Kendall Jenner’s new hiking outfit or quoting Trump’s latest Truth Social tantrum—usually a lie he’ll turn into an Executive Order within hours.
This is the part they’re not putting on the front page:
16 million people priced out of the marketplace.
Small businesses squeezed until they drop coverage altogether.
Rural hospitals shutting down because the red-state governors who cheered this on have no plan to pay the bills.
A ripple effect of health care inflation that will hit every American household, just in time to help Republicans trip over each other in Congress and set up years of gridlock.
Maybe after this implodes, the Republican Party will finally self-immolate, and Elon Musk can start the Billionaire Boys Club Party—at least then they’d be honest about plundering the country for their own stock portfolios and ex-wife alimonies.
But in the meantime, the bill is coming due. And when it lands in your mailbox—don’t let them pretend they didn’t sign for the package.
About Gary Blumenthal:
I’m a lifelong advocate, a former state legislator, and—at 71—still stubborn enough to believe Americans deserve health care that won’t bankrupt them. If you’d like to help me avoid picking up a side gig as a warehouse club greeter (those concrete floors are murder on my knees), consider becoming a paid subscriber. It helps keep this work going—and it’s cheaper than your next deductible.