As I write these words, it is Day 10 of a government shutdown. There can be no doubt who is responsible for this shutdown. Republicans passed a clean Continuing Resolution (CR), meaning no additional legislation attached, and Democrats are refusing to support it. Both sides have their arguments for why, but the truth is clear to anyone who has studied the healthcare issues at stake.

I’ve been writing about the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) since 2010 and published my first book, The ObamaCare Train Wreck, in 2014. Much of what I said in that book is being played out in the current political situation.

The Affordable Care Act is unaffordable. That’s the simple truth. It has totally failed to live up to its promises including President Obama’s famous lies that “If you like your plan you can keep your plan” and “It will save every family $2500 per year.”

Since ObamaCare was passed without a single Republican vote, the Democrats are totally responsible for its failure. Therefore, they are doing everything possible to make it more affordable to most Americans by increasing government subsidies. This the fundamental problem behind the current government shutdown.

Why is Chuck Schumer shutting down the government?

There are four reasons why Schumer is making his demands:

• Protecting healthcare for illegal immigrants – The Biden administration gave illegals TPS (Temporary Protective Status) to enable them to get government funded healthcare. The Trump administration revoked this status in the Big Beautiful Bill which was passed without Democratic support. Although polls show a clear majority of Americans do not support taxpayer support of healthcare for illegals, Schumer is trying to reverse this legislation by refusing to pass the CR to keep the government open because the 60 votes needed requires Democratic approval. They deny they are providing healthcare for illegals because they still consider these people to have TPS status.
• Protecting expanded Medicaid eligibility – Medicaid was originally intended only for pregnant women, children, the poor and the disabled. It was never intended for able-bodied adults who refuse to work. ObamaCare changed the eligibility requirements, making able-bodied adults who make less than 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL) eligible. Then the Biden administration raised these limits to 400% of FPL using the Covid pandemic as an excuse. Many Americans making even up to $500,000 a year have been placed on Medicaid, many without their knowledge, as the Biden administration increased the rolls of Medicaid. Republicans are not throwing anyone off Medicaid who is eligible by the standards of ObamaCare. They are simply trying to reverse the temporary expansion of Medicaid by President Biden.
• Promoting socialized medicine – It has been a goal of Progressives to have total government control of healthcare – socialized medicine – for nearly a hundred years. ObamaCare moved them closer to this goal, but we still have a thriving private healthcare insurance system. The expansion of Medicaid and ObamaCare and the authorization of healthcare for illegal immigrants moves the country closer to total government control of healthcare. Progressives will not stop the expansion of government sponsored healthcare until they achieve their goal.
• Protecting Chuck Schumer’s political future – It is common knowledge that Schumer fears a primary challenge from rising Democratic threat, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) unless he pleases the Progressive left of his party. He fears for his own political future unless he fights everything the Trump administration tries to do.

The fundamental problem here is the failed Affordable Care Act. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) writing in The Wall Street Journal says, “Average monthly premiums per person skyrocketed from $242 in 2013, the year before ObamaCare was enacted, to nearly $600 in 2019—an increase in costs of about 140% in six years. In the past five years, costs have continued to rise, with 2026 premiums expected to jump 15% over 2025. The federal government has continuously increased subsidies to insurance companies to hide ObamaCare’s affordability failures and spare Americans on ObamaCare from its skyrocketing costs—while everyone’s premiums, copayments and deductibles have soared.”

Since 2014, the share of ObamaCare premium costs paid for by the federal government has risen from 68.4% to 80.3%. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2023 and 2024 alone, the federal government paid more than $200 billion to insurers to keep premium increases artificially low. This is an unsustainable system that feeds billions of taxpayer dollars to insurance companies. The federal government spent $111.2 billion on ObamaCare subsidies last year, sending checks to insurance companies for 19 million recipients. Reports indicate five million of those recipients were ineligible. That means the average American paid $327 of tax dollars last year on these subsidies, of which some $82 covered fraudulent enrollment.

Scott concludes, “It is time to end this madness by lowering the cost of healthcare, encouraging innovation at the state level, stopping fraud and waste in the system, increasing competition in the health insurance and provider markets, and giving the American people the ability to spend healthcare dollars in the way that best meets their individual needs.”

It is also time to end the Schumer madness of shutting down the government to reverse Republican legislation he didn’t have the votes to defeat in the first place. The American people deserve better.

“No good deed goes unpunished.” That famous saying applies to a lot of things – including government efforts to do good. There always seem to be unintended consequences.

For example, The Wall Street Journal editors tell us about an obscure government program called the 340B drug program. “The 340B program is a classic example of a well-intended policy that has caused unintended harm. Congress established the program in 1992 to help hospitals that disproportionately serve Medicaid and low-income patients. Such hospitals are allowed to buy outpatient drugs at steeply discounted rates, on average about 45% of a drug’s list price.” 

Hospitals then charge insurers and Medicare a large mark-up on the drugs when their pharmacies administer them to patients, pocketing the difference. Spending in the program has surged 11-fold since 2010 and exceeds Medicaid pharmaceutical spending.

One culprit is ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, which made more hospitals eligible. Some 2,700 hospitals now qualify for discounts, up from 45 in 1992. These include such well-off hospitals as the Cleveland Clinic, New York’s Northwell Health system, Beverly Hills’s Cedars-Sinai and New York Presbyterian.

As the Congressional Budget Office explained recently in a report, the program has encouraged consolidation among providers since outpatient clinics and physicians owned by eligible hospitals benefit from discounts. So do pharmacies, which have 212,000 contract arrangements with 340B hospitals to administer medicines. That’s up from 1,700 in 2010.That kind of exponential growth is a clear tip-off that people are gaming the system.

Studies have found doctors employed by 340B hospitals are also more likely to prescribe higher-priced drugs. Why? Because the hospitals and their pharmacy partners reap bigger discounts on them than they do on generics. The result: Private insurers and Medicare spend more on drugs. This is just another example of how the increasing employment of  physicians by hospitals is leading to higher healthcare costs as doctors are forced to operate under the profit-motivated rules of their employers.

As the program currently operates, a hospital can also claim the discounts for drugs administered to former patients they aren’t currently treating. Consider a privately-insured patient referred by a hospital’s primary care doctor to an outside rheumatologist. If the patient fills a medicine prescribed by that rheumatologist at one of the hospital’s contracted pharmacies, the hospital and the pharmacy can claim the discount. Hospitals and pharmacies employ firms to scour patient records and prescriptions to maximize discounts.

Hospitals are supposed to use the discounts for low-income patients, but a report this spring by Senate Republicans found little evidence they do. A study this year by consulting shop Magnolia Market Access estimated that a third of the discount dollars are directed to hospitals’ financial portfolios—bonds, stocks, etc.

Some hospitals have signed deals with minor-league and college sports teams for naming rights to stadiums. Northwell has launched a film company, supposedly to help with marketing. The discounts have also given hospitals more money to acquire physician practices. Such consolidation has increased prices and insurance premiums. In other words, more profit from hiring physicians leads to more hiring of physicians, which leads to even higher healthcare costs. This is like a freight train out of control.

The nearby chart shows that hospital prices have increased 88% over the last 15 years, compared to 48.4% for the overall consumer-price index, 38.4% for prescription drugs and 29.5% for physician services. To offset the growing hospital discounts, drug makers raise prices.

Enter the Health and Human Services Department, which has announced an experiment to prevent hospitals from gaming the program to claim more discounts. Instead of receiving up-front discounts, hospitals would have to file claims with manufacturers for rebates, though only for the 10 drugs in the Inflation Reduction Act’s first round of price controls.

One goal is to ensure that drug makers don’t have to pay discounts twice on the same drugs. Another is to provide more transparency by requiring hospitals and pharmacies to validate the patients and prescriptions for which they are claiming discounts. The government’s current method is trust the hospitals, which want to keep it this way.

The hospital lobby last month all but threatened to sue HHS if it moves forward with its experiment. Some 166 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, demanded HHS cancel its test. It’s amusing to watch progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defend big, wealthy hospitals.

On a more constructive note, GOP Reps. Earl Carter (Ga.) and Diana Harshbarger(Tenn.) have introduced legislation that would ensure the 340B program benefits low-income hospitals and patients, as it was intended.

I love golf. Since I was eight years old when my father cut down a 5 iron to my size, I have loved the game of golf.

I love golf for many reasons. I love being outdoors on beautifully manicured golf courses. I love the variety of golf challenges that different courses present. I love the beauty of spectacular golf settings like Pebble Beach, Augusta National, and Royal County Down, Ireland.

I love a game where performance is up to you, not a team, and there’s no one else to blame or depend upon. I love a game where every player is expected to call rules infractions on themselves, even when no one else noticed. That’s a game of integrity. Golf is a gentlemen’s game that teaches you integrity and sportsmanship.

I love a game where the players shake hands before and after the match, and take off their caps, regardless of who wins; where you congratulate your opponent when their play is better than yours. I love a game where the spectators are deathly silent when the players play their shot; regardless of which team they are rooting for. I love a game where sportsmanship is revered and practiced by all.

Unfortunately, Ryder Cup is none of the above. The recently completed Ryder Cup played at Bethpage Black in New York was more like a European football (soccer) game, a sport known for occasional crowd violence, than a game of golf. The intensity of the competition brings out the worst behavior in the fans and sometimes the players alike. This is not golf at its finest.

Saturday was golf at its worst. The New York fans were awful in their treatment of the European players. The European players responded with some of their worst behavior, as you might expect. Had the competition ended Saturday, the future of Ryder Cup golf might have been in doubt.

Fortunately, the Americans rallied on Sunday and the atmosphere improved as well. To their credit, the Europeans were gracious in victory. Rory McIlroy said, “The American players conducted themselves with class today, absolutely. All week, really. Very classy. We put them in a hole early and they handled it well. With some of the stuff I had to deal with this week on the course, I really appreciated how Justin Thomas and Cameron Young tried to calm the crowd down.”

In this world of increasing violence, I am afraid we will soon witness violence on the golf course, of all places. Golf is supposed to be about “a walk in the park,” not a fight in the streets. It’s supposed to bring out the best behavior in fans and players, not the worst.

In 1969, the Ryder Cup ended in a tie, 16-16, only because Jack Nicklaus conceded a final tying putt to English star Tony Jacklin. It was an act of extreme sporting grace that is now referred to as The Concession. It is hard to imagine such sportsmanship in the current Ryder Cup environment. I dare say a fight would likely break out in the crowd if the conceding team were the home team today.

This is not the atmosphere that English businessman Samuel Ryder envisioned when he donated the money to purchase the cup in 1927. I believe changes are needed in the future to ensure the competition lives up to the highest standards of sportsmanship and the game of golf. Golf is a gentleman’s game and no team competition should change that.