The TRUTH About Obamacare Subsidies (Trump Finally Says It Out Loud)

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President Trump is taking direct aim at Obamacare—and this morning’s post is already melting down the political class. He says the only healthcare plan he’ll support is one that sends the money straight back to the people, bypassing the “big, fat, rich insurance companies” that have been soaking Americans for years.
In this episode, we break down:

• Why subsidies actually drive healthcare costs UP
• How Obamacare insulated insurers from competition
• What would happen if insurance companies vanished tomorrow
• Why doctors are fleeing the profession
• And the real structural reforms Congress refuses to touch

Trump’s idea is a step in the right direction—but nowhere near enough to fix the disaster we’re living through. And the insurance lobby knows it.

Episode Transcript

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 will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Trump takes on Obamacare and all of the extended subsidies.
This was the tweet from this morning. The only healthcare
I will support or approve is sending the money directly
back to the people, with nothing going to the big,
fat rich insurance companies who have made trillions and ripped

(00:40):
off America. Long enough that people will be allowed to
negotiate and buy their own much better insurance. Power to
the people. Congress, do not waste your time and energy
on anything else. This is the only way to have
great healthcare in America. Get it done now, President and
DJ Okay, first and foremost, Okay, you're going to send money. Listen,

(01:08):
get your head. He's heading in the right direction. Okay,
in the right direction, but not really. First and foremost
sending people cash to buy health insurance. How in the
world is that going to work? Are we going to

(01:30):
have some sort of EBT card for healthcare? Some sort
of coupon sent by the government where you're allowed to
buy healthcare with it. Another problem with this, this is
one of the problems that we have, is the fact

(01:51):
that anytime we subsidize anything, the price will go up.
I made this example twenty years ago here on the program,
and I did it with I talking about Starbucks coffee, said,
you know, imagine if the American public is all up
in arms about the price of Starbucks coffee, and let's

(02:13):
say a Starbucks coffee is five dollars. I think that
was the price I used back in the day, and
Democrats get all bent out of shape Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Oh,
we can't have this. We got to help people pay
for their coffee. So we're going to subsidize people's coffee
purchase at Starbucks to the tune of two dollars and

(02:35):
fifty cents. So every single time you go out and
you buy a cup of coffee, the government's going to
kick in two dollars in fifty cents. Do you think
Starbucks is going to keep their price at two dollars
and fifty cents, or do you think Starbucks is going
to raise their price by two dollars and fifty cents?

(02:56):
You were spending five bucks before, spend five bucks again,
and they'll collect that two dollars and fifty cents. That's
what happens when you subsidize anything anything. The system we
have has been an adjunct disaster, and everyone knows it.

(03:19):
Everyone knows it. Sending people cash, sending people money to
go and negotiate and buy health insurance from who from who?
I mean, it's you buy health insurance. You have your
Bronze Plan, your Silver Plan, your Gold Plan, your Platinum planet,

(03:40):
and the reality of the situation is they're they're all
pretty crappy. Quite frankly, there's still a pain in the neck,
the loopholes you gotta go through and the you know,
the approvals that you have to get, and how many
people out there have had to make that phone call. Ah, yeah,
it needs an MRI, And you're speaking of some dufis

(04:04):
out in the middle of nowhere somewhere and you're talking
with them about getting an approval on an MRI when
you just had an orthopedic surgeon that happened to go
to med school that told you your kid needed an MRI.
But I got to get the approval from this duficst
in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

(04:25):
Again you start yelling and screaming and asking for serenity. Now,
like George Costanza on Seinfeld, it's a disaster. The entire
system is a mess. One idea that was put forward today,
and again I wasn't thrilled with this one either. This

(04:48):
was saying, this is our economist, the real fix for Obamacare.
The problem isn't the size of the subsidies, it's their structure.
The Affordable Care Act subsidy formula guarantees that people buying
health insurance through the marketplace is pay no more than
a fixed percentage of income for a benchmark plan. The
government pays the rest. Now, this shields the buyers from

(05:11):
any sort of premium increases, but ensures that when premiums rise,
taxpayers pay more, insurers face little pressure to compete on price,
and government costs grow faster than enrollment. Again, the way
that the system is structured right now, and he's not
wrong on this, it's the insurance companies just this is

(05:36):
what it is. Pay us. This is what it is.
Pay us. They collect whatever the taxpayer, the people that
are on the Obamacare exchange can pay, and the taxpayer.
The rest of the country kicks in the rest. In
twenty fifteen, enrollees who received assistance paid about thirty six

(05:59):
percent of their premium out of pocket. By twenty twenty three,
it's seventeen percent. The average net premiums for subsidized enrollees
largely remained flat, even as gross premiums rose, because who
because taxpayers absorbed the increase. Again, we can get into

(06:27):
the market forces with this, but the reality is, and
I've explained this before, and this is difficult for many
people who I really don't understand how the world works
when it comes to money, subsidies, whatever it may be
to this. To them, it's it's again, it's it's otherworldly.

(06:48):
They can't imagine. I always you know, I think I
love that movie that's a big Gen X movie, love it.
Fight Club and the end of Fight Club if you
haven't seen in the movie David Fincher film Phenomenal. They
basically go after the credit card companies and the banks

(07:08):
that are enslaving people with debt. If that were today,
I've said this before, I think that the book in
the movie would be going either after social media or
in this case, going after health insurance companies. What would happen? Okay,
can close your eyes unless you're driving in your car. Imagine,

(07:33):
imagine everybody wakes up tomorrow. You wake up tomorrow morning,
and all of a sudden, there's not a single insurance
company health insurance company in the country. What would happen, Well,
a lot of people that do not provide healthcare, that

(07:54):
are in the quote unquote healthcare industry would be out
of a job. See you don't need you, Goodbye, administrators,
see you later. Bye. Go back to school, Go to
med school. You want to be involved with their go
to med school, Go to nursing school. For crying out loud,
starting sally for nurses is like one hundred and fifty
grand a year. Go and each and every one of

(08:19):
these doctors and hospitals and their costs would drop precipitously,
and they would have to start pricing their products based
upon what people can afford to pay. Novel concept, right,

(08:39):
Forcing people Another aspect of this as well that I've
talked about forcing people, Forcing people to pay for insurance
that they don't need. That's what I have to pay,
That's what I have to pay. Okay, again, I've talked

(09:02):
about maternity I've talked about, or drug addiction, all of
these things I don't. I don't and they've given you.
Oh yeah, you're gonna get a discode on your primary
kit primary care. I mean for crying out loud. I
mean everybody's walking around with a bloody apple watch for crying,
checking a myriad of different things. Remember Gordon Gecko and

(09:23):
Wall Street and he was checking his blood pressure and
doing all that stuff. And wow, I am cost effish.
It makes sense. I can do this right here. Yeah.
Do I go get my blood tested every three or
four months? It's one hundred bucks. One of my vitamin levels?
At what's my PSA? At myriad of different things? Primary? Well, okay,

(09:47):
I know when I got to go check for a
con aspo. I go do all that stuff when I
need to do it. Okay. What would happen? And I
know I've I've talked about this before for my long time. Listens,
what would happen if all of a sudden the government
mandated that your car insurance polic what you would have
to buy, would have to cover oil changes and car washes,

(10:12):
tire changes. How much more would your car insurance be
Insurance Okay, again, pay close attention. Okay. Insurance is something
that you buy that you hope you never have to use.

(10:36):
I have never ever, ever had to use my home
insurance policy. Knock on would Okay, never had to use it.
The homes that I've had, I've never had to use it.
And I'm happy that I've never had to use it,
because guess what if I had to use my home insurance,

(11:01):
bad crap happened. Now a car insurance, car insurance, Yeah,
I've gotten in some accidents getting you know, quite a
few drivers in my house. I've had to use it.
And again you got younger drivers, higher risk under a
certain age. My car insurance pretty expensive, is what it is. Okay,

(11:26):
that's part of it. Greater risk, greater risk will greater premium.
Why why every wonder why? Health? You know, health insurance
is not priced that way. You think about that, everything
about that. You know, you people out there that you
take care of yourself. You eat well, you go to

(11:47):
the gym every single day. You're doing all the right things.
You are healthy. You're healthy. You can't remember the last
time you went to a dot. You have no need,
you don't get sick, You do all the right thing.
Yet you're paying the same premium that somebody who is
not healthy, maybe morbidly obese. In what world does that

(12:10):
make sense? In what world does that make sense? And
I know that was the big thing, pre existing conditions,
and it's not fair. Blah blah blah bla. Listen, you
can have that, Okay, you can have a high risk pool.
There's no doubt about that for certain people. And I

(12:33):
get that. Have you that you know, but you know
for a health insurance company for you remember back in
that you being able to have an ailment, Okay, be
sick and then after the fact go on and get
health insurance and then have them have to cover that.
How does that make any sense whatsoever? It doesn't. Basically,

(12:56):
you're having the taxpayer subsidize the entire thing. It doesn't
make any sense. And it's funny today there was a
who was the writer of this column I was not
saying Fox. Turns out you know this Jessica Shubble, founder

(13:18):
of day one Street Energies. It's a lobbying firm Washington,
d C. And she was a former Special assistant to
the President for healthcare. It's under Joe Biden. Oh yeah,
talking about Trump's latest healthcare ideas, sending money directly to
people so they can purchase their own uh, you know,

(13:39):
much better healthcare, and again, like I should writes, the
things one Republicans are proposing is a bad deal for
hard working Americans. Hey, I know you're Jessica. You are
a lobbyist. You don't really work very hard. Okay, you
live in the world of bull excremate, But I pretty hard. Okay,

(14:02):
I people, my clients work pretty hard. And let me
tell you something right now, my health insurance couldn't even
be a worse deal. Horrible, horrible. All I want, all
I want is just to go back to the way
it was prior to Obamacare. That's it's it catastrophic health
insurance coupled with a health savings account.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
And again she's saying that this is going to push
millions into buying high cost plans that make you pay
thousands of dollars before they start paying for your care.
That's how most of them are anyway, What are you fool?
That's how most of these plans are, and healthcare costs
could skyrocket while undermining the entire Obamacare system they already have.

(14:50):
What are you talking about they're already going through the
roof Obamacare system. Everybody knows it's failed, it's failed. What
do you people, holy God do, what is good about
this system at all? Nothing? Nothing? Name one good thing
about it? You can't, you can't. One more story on

(15:15):
the same front. This was in the Wall Street Journal
today and it's something I've talked about as well. Again,
who wants to be a doctor? Who wants to go
to medical school? Certain fields? Yeah, certain certain field, certain

(15:36):
fields yeah. Again. I found this pretty fascinating. My eldest
son who graduated high cost Catholic school two years ago.
They started construction on a massive new school there and

(15:57):
to nursing school, the nurses going. Again, it makes sense
based upon the type of money that the graduates are
going to get coming out of that school. At that
point in time, you want to be involved in healthcare,
you know, Okay, it's a great way you want to
go out there and help people to want a noble profession, phenomenal,

(16:19):
But may mean some they don't want to take on
the debt, they don't want to go to medic school school,
and they still want to help and they're still getting
paid to do that. Interesting is not well again. I
told this as well. How many of friends and clients,
doctors and surgeons told my son, who that's what he

(16:43):
was originally going to do, don't do it, don't do it.
Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. These
are guys that are worthopedic surgeon's backs, I mean the
top of the field. They're like, now, now you don't understand.
I'm like, wow, think about that for a second. It's
kind of screwed up, kind of screwed up. And it

(17:03):
was a story today and it was talking about how
very different people that are on Medicaid and how they're
having you know, they they're Medicaid, have one of their
health insurance plans is senteen, and how they have various
different doctors that are supposedly on their plan through Medicaid.

(17:27):
Yet none of these parents on this and they were
talking about their kids needing various different things can get
an appointment, even though doctors said, we take Medicaid, we
take Medicaid, but they can't get an appointment with anybody.
And it was actually interesting as well. They had a
little chart here and he was basically showing the various

(17:49):
different doctors pulmonologists other things here that people people can't
get appointments with this even though they have the insurance.
And again amazing to me that the entire journal article
couldn't figure it out again Wall Street Journal. Doctors run

(18:09):
businesses too. They run businesses, and they have to keep
the lights on, and they have got to pay their administrators.
They've got all these costs that are involved if you
are only reimbursing him a certain amount of money, and
especially in a field in this case that we're talking

(18:31):
about a lady whose son who has autism and attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder. Again, you have to spend a lot
of time with that kid during appointments. Naturally, there's only
so many hours in the day. And if your reimbursement
is only this, how do you make that work? You know,

(18:55):
I here Markowski Investments. We take on everyone that needs help.
And you know, many of the clients that we have, again,
it's more about building them up and growing their assets
over time, and we can scale and we can do that.
I don't have a zillion administrators. It's one of the

(19:16):
reasons why I'm lucky in my field. Even though I
have tons of regulations with the sec I'm not dealing
with the crap that doctors are. I don't need a
big physical plan, and I made it perfectly clear. I'm
not in the entertainment Businically, I don't have time to
go golf and I don't have time to be go
doing all these things. Because we've got clients all over
the country, twenty five offices. We're busy. Okay, we're doing

(19:40):
our job. But again we're capable of doing that. Whereas
a doctor that's treating you know, kid for autism has
got to spend during an appointment a half an hour
and their reimbursement is forty dollars. Yet you might be
able to take some Medicaid pay but you can't take

(20:01):
that many. Yeah, you have to eventually make the ends meet. Man,
you think about these don't even though well, you have
some of the here, younger doctors doing some of the stuff. Okay, uh, yeah,
they're graduating from med school with you know, who knows
how much, and you know, student loan debt in regards

(20:24):
to what we charge kids to go to medical school,
which is patently absurd in the first place. This is
where we're at. Yeah, I've talked about that here on
the program, you know, fast tracking kids to go to
medical school, the stupid path, making them take all these
nonsensical classes and pay for them, uh in undergrad where

(20:45):
they could be getting them through that much quicker like
they do in Europe at a much lower cost. But no, no, no, no, no,
no again, you've got to make sure that the colleges
and universities get their vig and make sure that the
kids are taking you know, who knows, diversity studies or
other bull crap class to make and take. Anyway, these
things are all as plain as day if you're willing

(21:06):
to think. Okay, I am hoping. Okay, President puts out
a tweet. Okay, it's a one small step in the
kind of the right direction. Sending out cash or coupons
to buy health insurance when again, these insures are gonna

(21:27):
what are they gonna do? Okay, we're getting money anyway,
what differences make? What is their incentive to change? You know,
just because you're sending people money, you're gonna have incentive
to chain. You've got to have to change, you know,
the requirements of the product out there. You have to
offer various different things. You have to allow it to
be sold across state lines. You have to allow for

(21:48):
more health insurance companies. Then that's a easy thing to do. Well,
simple thing to do. I get that wrong all the time.
Very simple things that I have proposed and I've been
proposing for years, but not easy. Why is it not easy? Well, again,

(22:09):
we vote for people who like to collect checks from
like lobbyists that just wrote that column on Fox News,
insurance companies. Whatever it may be, Am I wrong, Prove
me wrong. That's why nothing is done. Okay, we have

(22:30):
an entrenched system now where insurance companies get paid, executives
get paid, and the politicians in Washington, d C. Get paid.
Break that up. I hope you can. I hope you can.
But you tried it last time. Tried it last time,

(22:53):
and I'm going to go back and reiterate, because again,
this is a bit of an urban legend. In my opinion,
hold John McCain's fault. John McCaine even thumbs down and
repeal an Obamacare. If it wasn't McCain, it would have
been somebody else. And I truly do believe that that's
just how corrupt the entire system is. Watch doog on

(23:13):
Wall Street dot Com.