House Speaker Mike Johnson just unveiled Republicans’ plan to address spiking health care costs—and it’s a disaster. 

As Affordable Care Act tax credits are set to expire in just a few weeks, sending health care costs surging for more than 20 million Americans, Republican leadership presented several bullet points Wednesday on how they plan to lower premiums and give Americans better health options. 

Instead of subsidizing premiums for those on Affordable Care Act plans, Republicans proposed introducing Health Savings Accounts, Association Health Plans, and Choice Accounts. 

Americans who don’t get insurance through their employer would be given cash directly into an account, which would reportedly be paired with a high-deductible health plan, meaning higher insurance premiums would be replaced by higher out-of-pocket costs. 

Currently, Obamacare enrollees never see the funds from their tax credits, which instead are sent directly to insurers. President Donald Trump has suggested that consumers would rather see the money themselves, what little of it there is. Republicans’ plan purports to take the burden of negotiating insurance rates away from health care providers and large companies and place it on individuals, so they can “feel like entrepreneurs,” according to Trump.

Republicans are also considering implementing cost-sharing reductions, programs that can assist low-income Americans in paying high deductibles, that were passed as part of Trump’s behemoth budget bill in July. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that funding these reductions will increase the number of people without health insurance by 300,000 through 2034.

Another bullet point was controversial “provider-owned hospitals,” which are directly owned and operated by the doctors. The Federation of American Hospitals published a study earlier this year finding that physician-owned hospitals, which focus on a boutique selection of treatments and services, could be damaging to community hospitals, which typically treat patients using Medicare or Medicaid and therefore operate on razor-thin margins. More provider-owned hospitals could siphon away healthier, better-insured patients.

Another point was to codify the Trump administration’s rules to “fix the ACA,” though it’s not entirely clear what that would entail.  

There were some potentially good ideas buried within their list aimed at increasing price transparency. One was to reform pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, a class of middlemen who manage the supply chain of prescription drugs. Critics of PBMs have suggested that consolidation among these managers has contributed to decreased transparency and thwarted competitive pricing. 

Another idea was “site neutrality,” which means that patients would pay the same prices for the same services regardless of setting—though some critics have warned that would further reduce hospital revenues. 

Johnson told Republicans that they wouldn’t implement all 10 of the proposed bullet points and that caucus members should choose two or three to pursue, NOTUS reported.

While discussion was “cordial,” a source told NOTUS, there was “no consensus” at all.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to California, rejecting the notion that recent protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol amounted to rebellion.

“The founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one,” Breyer wrote in his 35-page opinion.

This all started this summer, when Trump sent thousands of National Guards troops to Los Angeles in response to protests, against the wishes of Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Back in September, Judge Breyer ruled that the Trump administration’s deployment of military troops in Los Angeles was a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

“Congress spoke clearly in 1878 when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law,” Breyer wrote then. “Nearly 140 years later, Defendants—President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and the Department of Defense—deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced.”

“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” he continued. “Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”

The Trump administration has yet to respond to Breyer’s order. There are about 100 troops still left in Los Angeles.

President Donald Trump threatened to fire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—not over interest rates, as he did in November, but over something even less under Bessent’s control: putting people in jail.

As part of a longer rant Tuesday about how much better the country is now than it was under former President Joe Biden, Trump once again turned his ire on Somali immigrants.

“Biden and the radical-left Democrats turned Pennsylvania into a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of migrants from the most........

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