Healthcare Near Top of Voters’ Concerns

A Gallup poll on the eve of the election [1] measured the issues of most salience to American voters. Unsurprisingly, the state of the economy was considered the most important, with 87 percent rating it either extremely or very important. However, a close runner-up was healthcare, which has been all but absent from the national discussion. Other top issues included the war in Iran, income and wealth distribution, and gas prices.

Common Dreams has noted [2] that the national movement towards single-payer health insurance, also known as Medicare for All, has been reinvigorated with the midterm elections. Strong new supporters of single payer include Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI) and Troy Jackson (D-ME) in the Senate, along with Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier (D-NY), Dr. Jasmine Clark (D-GA), and Melat Kiros (D-CO) in the House of Representatives. While it is unlikely that a bill will be signed while Trump is in office, stalwart supporters like Bernie Sanders (I-VT) plan to introduce Medicare for All into Congress once again.

The New York Times recently covered yet another aspect of the dysfunction of our private insurance system [3]. A 2022 bill, the No Surprises Act, was passed by a wide bipartisan majority to ensure patients wouldn’t be saddled with excessive bills when facing emergencies and being unable to pick their doctors. The Act created an arbitration system which was supposed to resolve the disputes between insurers and providers regarding these medical bills. However, providers responded to the Act by swamping the system with millions of claims, often overinflating by many multiples of the cost of providing emergency care. And increasingly insurers — especially big for-profit insurers Anthem and Cigna — have responded by just ignoring the arbitration results and refusing to pay the medical bills. While patients are still insulated from paying these bills directly, the costs related to the arbitrations and unpaid claims are ultimately borne across the insurance risk pool and hospital systems, driving up overall costs.

Meanwhile, The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has broken down [4] how the negative changes wrought by the Trump Administration have impacted enrollees in Affordable Care Act marketplace health plans during the 2027 open enrollment period. Overall, unsubsidized premiums are set to increase by 15 percent, although compared to last year, enrollees will be insulated from more of the increase, if only because they already experienced a massive premium spike with the end of the extended premium credits in the previous year. In addition, immigrants in the U.S. lawfully who do not hold a green card (including refugees and those granted asylum or humanitarian parole) will no longer have access to premium credits. 

Share of National Income Going to Workers Sinks

A recent study [5] of data collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found the share of U.S. income which went towards worker’s wages was steady at a bit north of 60 percent from the end of World War II until around twenty-five years ago. Since that time, it’s declined by almost ten percent. Even within the share which still remains with workers, analysis by the Economic Policy Institute has found that an increasing proportion are taken up by the top 1 percent, and especially the top 0.1 percent, as “excess” wages which were extracted through lowering living standards for lower-income jobs were sopped up by the executive class. 

President Trump Makes $2.7 Billion Off the Presidency

President Trump has been unique among recent Presidents in the open degree (particularly in his second term) to which he has sought to monetize the Presidency via “memecoins” and other crypto assets. With the recent midterm elections, The Guardian reports the value of many of these companies has collapsed [6], with the value of Trump Media and World Liberty Financial plunging. However, President Trump still made over $2.7 billion in his first two years in office; including hundreds of millions off of crypto and novelty coins not tied up in stock of these associated businesses.

The Hungry Pay for Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act paid for its massive tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses in part through deep cuts to the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP, often referred to as Food Stamps). The Guardian reported recently on the impact of this [7], with the total number of enrolled people dropping by 5 million, or 13 percent. This is largely due to new requirements that disabled people and those with teenage dependents must work at least twenty hours a week or volunteer to receive benefits. In addition, the percent of administrative costs paid by the states increased from fifty to seventy-five percent, adding additional strain on state budgets. Some states have had declines in total enrollment by as much as half, and the cuts have had additional downstream effects on social services, such as making it much harder for school districts to qualify for free and reduced school lunch programs. 

This past week, the Trump Administration unveiled yet another plan [8] to drop additional millions of Americans from having access to SNAP food assistance. Under existing regulations, families which qualify for some benefits under TANF, like childcare subsidies and employment training services, making over $35,000 a year will be cut from benefits. As a result, some six million of the current 36 million enrolled (or 20 percent of total enrollees) will be cut from the program. These changes will not take effect until 2029, leaving a mess for the next U.S. presidential administration to address.

Oil Profits Soar in Wake of Oil War

The Guardian has also recently reported on [9] the tremendous windfall the Iran-War-spurred surge in global oil prices has been for major companies in the oil and gas industry. Overall the top nine largest companies are on track to amass $95 billion in profits for the third quarter of 2026 alone, with Saudi state-owned Aramco increasing its quarterly net income to $30 billion. Companies more well-known to Americans, like ExxonMobil or Chevron, have tripled their profit margins or more. A not-insubstantial portion of the higher cost of gasoline and other oil products come from profit-seeking from oil companies, taking advantage of a captive audience which must consume its products.

State-Owned Bank in North Dakota Popular Across Political Spectrum

CNBC recently highlighted [10] a strange remaining quirk of an earlier period of socialist uprising: the Bank of North Dakota. Formed in 1918 during a period where former Socialist Party members formed a Socialist-Populist alliance (The Nonpartisan League), which took over the moribund state Republican Party, the bank has resisted privatization calls for over a century. It remains popular in the state across the political spectrum, managing some $11 billion in assets. Although the bank in many ways operates similarly to private banks, elected officials sit in key decision-making positions, and the state uses its financial base towards the common good, from funding infrastructure projects, to disaster relief, to providing young North Dakotans with access to low-interest student loans. Several states, including Massachusetts, New Mexico, and California, are also considering proposals to set up public banks.