November 11, 2025 • 12 mins
LISTEN and SUBSCRIBE on:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
In this hard-hitting Watchdog on Wall Street episode, the host dismantles the myth that repealing and replacing Obamacare is “too complicated.” He argues the real problem is Obamacare itself — a bloated, profit-driven system that’s crushed small businesses, inflated premiums, and made insurers and lobbyists rich while the middle class pays the price. From price transparency to catastrophic-only coverage and interstate competition, he lays out a straightforward reform plan — and blasts both parties for protecting their donors instead of patients. With the midterms looming, the message is clear: fix it now, or lose your last chance to do so.
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
In this hard-hitting Watchdog on Wall Street episode, the host dismantles the myth that repealing and replacing Obamacare is “too complicated.” He argues the real problem is Obamacare itself — a bloated, profit-driven system that’s crushed small businesses, inflated premiums, and made insurers and lobbyists rich while the middle class pays the price. From price transparency to catastrophic-only coverage and interstate competition, he lays out a straightforward reform plan — and blasts both parties for protecting their donors instead of patients. With the midterms looming, the message is clear: fix it now, or lose your last chance to do so.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Replacing Obamacare, Yeah, they call it the Affordable Care Act.
We've talked about it here on the program, and has
nothing to do with being affordable. Many people saying, oh,
it's you know, it's too complicated, mission impossible to replace it. No,
no placing parts easy. The Affordable Care Act Obamacare is
(00:38):
the thing that's impossible, that's complicated, that makes no sense.
That's why the price keeps going up. It's not not
a complicated thing to do. The suggestions that we made
when you know, the Republicans were pushing back against obamacareater
(00:58):
no different. It's no different, really simple, really some simple
things that need to be done again. First and foremost,
we need price transparency. People need to know what they're
paying for. Second, let people pay for them. Let people
(01:22):
pay for them. You gotta go to the doctor, you
got a sore throat, pay pay you do it for
your dog. For crying out loud, you can't do it.
For yourself. You can't do it for your kid. Simple
thing like that, kids got a cold, You need to
cover that with insurance. No, you pay, Where are we're
gonna get the money? Well, guess what. Guess what. You
(01:46):
know how much your employer is paying for insurance for you? Well,
guess what, that's your money. That's part of the cost
of employing you. You're gonna get paid more. Small business
owners completely understand what I'm talking about because they're the
ones that pay not only their employees, but they also
pay for themselves and see the money that is lost,
not to mention the deductibles that go with it. Catastrophic insurance.
(02:10):
That is the only type of health insurance that people
should have. That's it. Catastrophic insurance. Yes, okay, bad things happen,
Bad things happen. My clients know, longtime listeners, No, this
is way prior to Obamacare. That's when we had we
(02:34):
had catastrophic insurance. And my brother Michael was hospitalized for
a very long period of time with the blood cancer
and had to have stem cell replace the whole. I mean,
it was not good, not good. Thank God, thank God,
(02:55):
and thank all of the doctors and health professionals that
took care of him. He's with us today, healthy as
could be. Insurance cover that. That's that's what catastrophic insurance is.
Or God forbid, you get into a car accident, things
are done. That's that's what your health insurance that cover
(03:16):
all this other crap. No, once you do that, Once
you do that, and doctors don't have to deal with
all sorts of nonsensical bookkeepers and bullshit, and they're actually
getting paid, prices are gonna come down. The prices are
gonna come down across the board. Any time you subsidize something,
(03:40):
the price is gonna go up. But what about people
in pre existing editions and all this stuff. Okay, you
have a high risk pool that the government can subsidize.
That's again a wrong word to use. Okay, they can
help pay for they can help pay for it. I
(04:03):
don't have any problem with that. To have a high
risk pool. Yeah, of course you got to contribute something. Okay.
With that being said, again, you're gonna have a high
risk pool that's going to be pretty big, pretty big
under those circumstances. Okay, and don't guess what. Then, again,
you can negotiate due to those numbers allow for all
(04:25):
these catastrophic policies to be sold across state lines. Again,
it's not a difficult thing to do. Okay, Geico does it,
Progressive does it? I mean, it's not that hard. Okay,
very simple solves the problem. What it doesn't solve is
(04:45):
the the issue money again, the use your money that
politicians are getting from the insurance companies. And all of
the grifters that are involved actually had astute email sent
to me. This was addressing the fact that you know,
(05:08):
I've mentioned this on the program, that Republicans are going
to continue with the subsidies. They're going to do it.
They're going to do it. They're going to go along
with it. But the argument is is that this is
a smart political strategy, and the strategy is is that
they should extend these for a year because if they don't,
(05:30):
this will be a campaign issue next fall and the
Dems will retake Congress. I couldn't disagree more. Yeah, it'll
be an issue if you don't fix it, it'll be absolutely
be an issue. But if you do fix it, and
(05:50):
people all of a sudden are not spending out the
wazoo when it comes to their health insurance, and let
me tell you why. Okay, Trump is going to be
one one big, fat lame duck after these midterms. It
is what it is. Do you think he's gonna get
anything accomplished after that? There is no way, Okay, presidents presidents.
(06:14):
Presidents have to basically treat their their term as a sprint. Okay,
normally it's back to back. I've talked about this here
on the program. When did Obama get everything done? And? Man,
oh man, did he get done? First two years? First
two years? He gets wiped out twenty ten the midterms?
What else happened after that? Can you I can't think
(06:38):
of anything off the top of my head, and I
do this for a living. What did he do outside
of foreign policy debacles with Hillary after twenty ten? Legislatively,
what did Barack Obama do after twenty ten? Remember he
got into it. That was a major shutdown. Then remember
that one government was shut down at that point in time,
(07:00):
and they were supposed to have the Committee to cut
government spending and that went nowhere. Then the Bush tax
cuts went away and our taxes went up. That that's
all it happened. First two years. Man, he had a
laundry list of things that he got accomplished. Trump has
got he's got to the midterms. Well, you think you
(07:20):
want to consume that Republicans are going to win? What
what would make you think? And by what? Any sort
of pull in metric right now? Again, unless Trump listens
to Markowski again, shuts the computer off, restarts a blue
screen and death and changes anything, you think Republicans are
(07:42):
going to win at the midterms. No way, no, how. Again,
it's not a difficult fix. The only difficulty, the only
difficulty again is the Republicans are addicted to the nice,
big fat checks from the insurance companies, the lobbyists, just
like the Democrats are. That's it. This doesn't involve the voters.
(08:10):
Just get it done, Get the damn thing done. And
I'm gonna I'm gonna break this down to you in
the same way I did. What you know, they talk
about McCain. You know you've seen a lot of McCain
right now and him giving the thumbs down. I'm here
to tell you McCain, they called McCain. Republicans called McCain up. Remember,
(08:30):
repeal and replace Republicans didn't have anything to replace it with,
and said, man, we don't want to deal with this
nonsense right now. We don't want to. We don't want
to deal with this. You and Trump have a beef,
you know. Can you take one for us and take
the take the flack a little bit from this and
give the thumbs down on it. I'm telling you right now,
that's what happened. If it wasn't McCain, they would have
(08:53):
asked somebody else to reject it. This is Yeah, it's
gonna involve some effort. Yeah, you're gonna have to sell
is the American people. But it'd be done because everyone
hates it. Okay, nobody likes it. Everyone is watching this
right here. I mean it's as plain as day. Okay,
try to get people to do Affordable Care Act when
(09:13):
everyone's prices are going through the roof and they're seeing it.
You have a better opportunity now than you did back then,
much better. You're gonna wait until the midterms. No, no, again.
You take a look, and it's so easy to explain.
Take a look at health insurance stocks since twenty ten.
(09:40):
United Healthcare is up eleven hundred percent, Humana is up
nine hundred percent, every other major insurance multiplied many times
over again. Why well, again in essence, they are too
big to fail too now only got big banks? Now
know you got Now do we have automakers here in
(10:02):
this country? This is when a law redirects risk, money
and responsibility to one to intermediate areas that are guaranteed
by the government. It was a great piece on this today.
(10:24):
You know. The ACA was a hybrid model that empowered
private insurers under federal supervision, a ban pricing based on
health medical underwriting, and required community rating meaning healthy and
sick customers pay the same. To prevent insurer losses, the
government built stabilizers, risk orders, reinsurance, and cost sharing subsidies
(10:48):
that shifted volatility to taxpayers. Once that risk was socialized,
insurers became more like regulated utilities, earning predictable margins, insulated
from loss, and subsidized by public dollars. Hey Wall Street
loves that stability, and again look at the stock prices
(11:10):
to the winners. Winners large insurers that had the scale
and lobbying power to shape complex rules in their favor.
Big employers and unions that offloaded unpredictable health care liabilities,
replacing them with fixed penalties or taxes. Compliance and technology
firms that profited from handling new regulatory and billing complexity.
(11:33):
The losers middle income households just above the subsidy threshold,
too rich for help, too poor for comfort, saw steep
premium hikes and rising deductibles. Small businesses and independent workers
lost leverage as coverage options shrink. Local doctors and small
providers were squeezed by insure consolidation and lower reimbursements. The
(11:57):
middle class, the very group the ACA was host to protect,
ended up subsidizing everyone else, while insurers, large corporations, and
contractors quietly won the argument There anyone and any argument
(12:19):
at all. Again, it's pretty much now or never. Okay,
this this punt until after the midterms. Nobuno not a
good idea watch dog on Wall Street dot com
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Replacing Obamacare, Yeah, they call it the Affordable Care Act.
We've talked about it here on the program, and has
nothing to do with being affordable. Many people saying, oh,
it's you know, it's too complicated, mission impossible to replace it. No,
no placing parts easy. The Affordable Care Act Obamacare is
(00:38):
the thing that's impossible, that's complicated, that makes no sense.
That's why the price keeps going up. It's not not
a complicated thing to do. The suggestions that we made
when you know, the Republicans were pushing back against obamacareater
(00:58):
no different. It's no different, really simple, really some simple
things that need to be done again. First and foremost,
we need price transparency. People need to know what they're
paying for. Second, let people pay for them. Let people
(01:22):
pay for them. You gotta go to the doctor, you
got a sore throat, pay pay you do it for
your dog. For crying out loud, you can't do it.
For yourself. You can't do it for your kid. Simple
thing like that, kids got a cold, You need to
cover that with insurance. No, you pay, Where are we're
gonna get the money? Well, guess what. Guess what. You
(01:46):
know how much your employer is paying for insurance for you? Well,
guess what, that's your money. That's part of the cost
of employing you. You're gonna get paid more. Small business
owners completely understand what I'm talking about because they're the
ones that pay not only their employees, but they also
pay for themselves and see the money that is lost,
not to mention the deductibles that go with it. Catastrophic insurance.
(02:10):
That is the only type of health insurance that people
should have. That's it. Catastrophic insurance. Yes, okay, bad things happen,
Bad things happen. My clients know, longtime listeners, No, this
is way prior to Obamacare. That's when we had we
(02:34):
had catastrophic insurance. And my brother Michael was hospitalized for
a very long period of time with the blood cancer
and had to have stem cell replace the whole. I mean,
it was not good, not good. Thank God, thank God,
(02:55):
and thank all of the doctors and health professionals that
took care of him. He's with us today, healthy as
could be. Insurance cover that. That's that's what catastrophic insurance is.
Or God forbid, you get into a car accident, things
are done. That's that's what your health insurance that cover
(03:16):
all this other crap. No, once you do that, Once
you do that, and doctors don't have to deal with
all sorts of nonsensical bookkeepers and bullshit, and they're actually
getting paid, prices are gonna come down. The prices are
gonna come down across the board. Any time you subsidize something,
(03:40):
the price is gonna go up. But what about people
in pre existing editions and all this stuff. Okay, you
have a high risk pool that the government can subsidize.
That's again a wrong word to use. Okay, they can
help pay for they can help pay for it. I
(04:03):
don't have any problem with that. To have a high
risk pool. Yeah, of course you got to contribute something. Okay.
With that being said, again, you're gonna have a high
risk pool that's going to be pretty big, pretty big
under those circumstances. Okay, and don't guess what. Then, again,
you can negotiate due to those numbers allow for all
(04:25):
these catastrophic policies to be sold across state lines. Again,
it's not a difficult thing to do. Okay, Geico does it,
Progressive does it? I mean, it's not that hard. Okay,
very simple solves the problem. What it doesn't solve is
(04:45):
the the issue money again, the use your money that
politicians are getting from the insurance companies. And all of
the grifters that are involved actually had astute email sent
to me. This was addressing the fact that you know,
(05:08):
I've mentioned this on the program, that Republicans are going
to continue with the subsidies. They're going to do it.
They're going to do it. They're going to go along
with it. But the argument is is that this is
a smart political strategy, and the strategy is is that
they should extend these for a year because if they don't,
(05:30):
this will be a campaign issue next fall and the
Dems will retake Congress. I couldn't disagree more. Yeah, it'll
be an issue if you don't fix it, it'll be absolutely
be an issue. But if you do fix it, and
(05:50):
people all of a sudden are not spending out the
wazoo when it comes to their health insurance, and let
me tell you why. Okay, Trump is going to be
one one big, fat lame duck after these midterms. It
is what it is. Do you think he's gonna get
anything accomplished after that? There is no way, Okay, presidents presidents.
(06:14):
Presidents have to basically treat their their term as a sprint. Okay,
normally it's back to back. I've talked about this here
on the program. When did Obama get everything done? And? Man,
oh man, did he get done? First two years? First
two years? He gets wiped out twenty ten the midterms?
What else happened after that? Can you I can't think
(06:38):
of anything off the top of my head, and I
do this for a living. What did he do outside
of foreign policy debacles with Hillary after twenty ten? Legislatively,
what did Barack Obama do after twenty ten? Remember he
got into it. That was a major shutdown. Then remember
that one government was shut down at that point in time,
(07:00):
and they were supposed to have the Committee to cut
government spending and that went nowhere. Then the Bush tax
cuts went away and our taxes went up. That that's
all it happened. First two years. Man, he had a
laundry list of things that he got accomplished. Trump has
got he's got to the midterms. Well, you think you
(07:20):
want to consume that Republicans are going to win? What
what would make you think? And by what? Any sort
of pull in metric right now? Again, unless Trump listens
to Markowski again, shuts the computer off, restarts a blue
screen and death and changes anything, you think Republicans are
(07:42):
going to win at the midterms. No way, no, how. Again,
it's not a difficult fix. The only difficulty, the only
difficulty again is the Republicans are addicted to the nice,
big fat checks from the insurance companies, the lobbyists, just
like the Democrats are. That's it. This doesn't involve the voters.
(08:10):
Just get it done, Get the damn thing done. And
I'm gonna I'm gonna break this down to you in
the same way I did. What you know, they talk
about McCain. You know you've seen a lot of McCain
right now and him giving the thumbs down. I'm here
to tell you McCain, they called McCain. Republicans called McCain up. Remember,
(08:30):
repeal and replace Republicans didn't have anything to replace it with,
and said, man, we don't want to deal with this
nonsense right now. We don't want to. We don't want
to deal with this. You and Trump have a beef,
you know. Can you take one for us and take
the take the flack a little bit from this and
give the thumbs down on it. I'm telling you right now,
that's what happened. If it wasn't McCain, they would have
(08:53):
asked somebody else to reject it. This is Yeah, it's
gonna involve some effort. Yeah, you're gonna have to sell
is the American people. But it'd be done because everyone
hates it. Okay, nobody likes it. Everyone is watching this
right here. I mean it's as plain as day. Okay,
try to get people to do Affordable Care Act when
(09:13):
everyone's prices are going through the roof and they're seeing it.
You have a better opportunity now than you did back then,
much better. You're gonna wait until the midterms. No, no, again.
You take a look, and it's so easy to explain.
Take a look at health insurance stocks since twenty ten.
(09:40):
United Healthcare is up eleven hundred percent, Humana is up
nine hundred percent, every other major insurance multiplied many times
over again. Why well, again in essence, they are too
big to fail too now only got big banks? Now
know you got Now do we have automakers here in
(10:02):
this country? This is when a law redirects risk, money
and responsibility to one to intermediate areas that are guaranteed
by the government. It was a great piece on this today.
(10:24):
You know. The ACA was a hybrid model that empowered
private insurers under federal supervision, a ban pricing based on
health medical underwriting, and required community rating meaning healthy and
sick customers pay the same. To prevent insurer losses, the
government built stabilizers, risk orders, reinsurance, and cost sharing subsidies
(10:48):
that shifted volatility to taxpayers. Once that risk was socialized,
insurers became more like regulated utilities, earning predictable margins, insulated
from loss, and subsidized by public dollars. Hey Wall Street
loves that stability, and again look at the stock prices
(11:10):
to the winners. Winners large insurers that had the scale
and lobbying power to shape complex rules in their favor.
Big employers and unions that offloaded unpredictable health care liabilities,
replacing them with fixed penalties or taxes. Compliance and technology
firms that profited from handling new regulatory and billing complexity.
(11:33):
The losers middle income households just above the subsidy threshold,
too rich for help, too poor for comfort, saw steep
premium hikes and rising deductibles. Small businesses and independent workers
lost leverage as coverage options shrink. Local doctors and small
providers were squeezed by insure consolidation and lower reimbursements. The
(11:57):
middle class, the very group the ACA was host to protect,
ended up subsidizing everyone else, while insurers, large corporations, and
contractors quietly won the argument There anyone and any argument
(12:19):
at all. Again, it's pretty much now or never. Okay,
this this punt until after the midterms. Nobuno not a
good idea watch dog on Wall Street dot com
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