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Weekly-News
Trump Weighs Ultimate Gift to For-Profit Insurance Industry: Medicare Privatization
"They want to remove the guarantee of Medicare," one advocate said of the Trump administration's floated plan to automatically enroll seniors in Medicare Advantage.
Apr 10, 2026
The Trump administration is considering enacting a policy that would automatically funnel seniors into for-profit Medicare Advantage plans—which critics say would set Medicare on the path to full-scale privatization.
Chris Klomp, the Trump administration's director of Medicare and deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told STAT last month that enrolling seniors in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans by default "is something that we're thinking through." MA plans are funded by the federal government and run by private insurance companies such as UnitedHealthcare and Humana, both of which have been accused of improperly denying necessary care to patients and overcharging taxpayers.
The default enrollment scheme was floated in the far-right Project 2025 agenda that President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to disavow. Currently, older Americans who have received Social Security benefits for at least four months before they turn 65 are automatically enrolled in traditional Medicare, and they can choose to enroll in an MA plan as an alternative.
"Another bad idea straight from Project 2025," Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in response to Klomp's comments on the proposed default enrollment change. "Medicare Advantage is private, for-profit insurance that overcharges American taxpayers by billions every year and regularly denies seniors the care they need."
"Making Medicare Advantage the default option hurts patients and taxpayers," Pocan added, "but it will make insurance execs a lot of money."
"With Mehmet Oz running the agency, they can move incredibly quickly to make that happen, and they are."
Klomp said no plans have been finalized, but defenders of traditional Medicare warned that CMS—headed by Mehmet Oz, who during his 2022 US Senate run backed a plan entitled "Medicare Advantage for All"—could try to swiftly ram the change through without public input.
"With Mehmet Oz running the agency, they can move incredibly quickly to make that happen, and they are," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams on Friday. "They will not explain it to the people, because the people hate the idea. Instead, they say 'change the default option' and other policy jargon to try and hide the fact of what they are doing, privatizing Medicare."
"They want to remove the guarantee of Medicare," warned Lawson, "and replace it with the same private insurance giants that make billions denying healthcare, especially to those who need it the most."
Experts say making Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for seniors would likely decrease traditional Medicare enrollment dramatically.
Given massive overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans—potentially $1.2 trillion over the next decade, according to one independent estimate—a large increase in MA enrollment would be sure to drive up costs and monthly premiums across the board. A report released last month by the congressional Joint Economic Committee estimated that MA overpayments led to premium hikes of $212 per Medicare Part B enrollee last year.
"Since 2016, MA overpayments have added an estimated $82 billion to Part B premiums," the congressional report found. "[Traditional Medicare] beneficiaries, who are not enrolled in MA, bore roughly $6 billion of that burden."
Under one scheme floated last year by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), eligible Medicare recipients would be automatically enrolled in the "MA plan with the lowest premium available," unless they actively decide to opt out. Once enrolled in an MA plan, individuals would be unable to switch plans for three years.
Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who now champions Medicare for All, warned Friday that under Schweikert's plan, "seniors would be locked in a plan that the government chose for them, that has a limited network of doctors and hospitals, that makes them pay the entire bill for services they might receive outside of that network, and that denies coverage for medically necessary care far more than traditional Medicare—for three years."
In addition to weighing the default enrollment change, the Trump administration has recently delivered smaller-scale but significant victories to MA insurers, including by boosting federal payment rates—bowing to a massive industry lobbying blitz—and easing rules around the marketing of MA plans.
David Lipschutz, co-director of law and policy at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said Thursday that the latter move represents "a rollback of consumer protections, which gives in to pressures from the insurance industry and those who sell their products."
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As Mexico Enacts Universal Healthcare, Advocate Says Insurers' 'Stranglehold' Is Moving US in 'Opposite Direction'
Medicare for All advocate Wendell Potter said it's "both inspiring and frustrating" to see other nations advance their public healthcare systems while the US dismantles its own.
Apr 10, 2026
As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum moves forward with a plan to enact universal healthcare for her country’s more than 130 million people, a longtime advocate for Medicare for All in the US called the development “both inspiring and frustrating.”
"Inspiring because it shows what is possible," Wendell Potter, a former insurance company communications director who has become a leading critic of the industry, told Common Dreams. "Frustrating because here in the US we are going in the opposite direction."
Earlier this week, Sheinbaum announced a decree that she called "a historic step" for Mexico.
Beginning in 2027, her government plans to unify Mexico's public health institutions into a single Universal Health Service, allowing patients across the country to receive care from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the Social Security Institute and Social Services of Workers of the State (ISSSTE), and the IMSS‑Bienestar program, which provides free services to those without employer-provided insurance.
According to TeleSur, universal access would be rolled out gradually, with universal emergency care and continuity of treatment, free of financial constraints, beginning in January. Specialized services such as radiotherapy, laboratory tests, and imaging studies would be phased in later that year, and universal prescription fulfillment and hospitalization would also be added to the program in 2028.
"The goal is that when we leave the government [in 2030], any Mexican man or woman can go to any health institution for treatment for any ailment and be received," Sheinbaum said.
Mexico has expanded its annual healthcare budget in recent years, but Sheinbaum's government hopes that consolidating all of Mexico's health services into a single program will eliminate bureaucratic bloat and create a more cost-effective system that saves money over time.
Potter described the plan as “just another example of countries around the world lapping the US when it comes to healthcare policy.”
While tens of millions more previously uninsured Mexicans have become eligible for free care under the healthcare expansion efforts of Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the US under President Donald Trump is in the process of shredding public healthcare programs and subsidies.
Following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by Trump last year, 11.8 million Americans are expected to lose Medicaid and other coverage, and more than 20 million are projected to see higher premiums after insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were allowed to expire.
"Due to the stranglehold Big Insurance has on too many politicians in this country, instead of expanding care and lowering costs, we are simply helping Big Insurance make more and more money," Potter said. "It is totally backwards."
"We must continue to keep Medicare for All as our north star here. But also acknowledge the reality that we need to change so much about our current political environment to make it possible," he said. "And that has to start with breaking up Big Insurance's stranglehold on Washington."
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Viral Parody Video Exposes Absurdity of Trump's Illegal Iran War
"Our goal from day one was for Iran to open the strait that didn't close until after we attacked."
Apr 09, 2026
Comedian Dave Columbo on Wednesday released a parody video that lampooned the Trump administration's contradictory and constantly changing rationales for its unconstitutional war with Iran.
In the video, which was first posted on Instagram and has since gone viral on other social media platforms, Columbo assumes the role of a White House spokesperson trying to explain what the US has achieved so far with its war, which Trump illegally launched without any congressional authorization more than a month ago.
"This is a victory for the US," Columbo says at the start of the video. "Because our goal from day one was for Iran to open the strait that didn't close until after we attacked, which was completely controlled by their military that we had total dominance over. And it was a waterway that we could have taken over, but instead we asked for help that we didn't need, but we'll remember our allies did not give us."
10/10. No notes. pic.twitter.com/YQ3JPNIR02
— Barney Panofsky's Best Intentions (@mynamesnotgordy) April 8, 2026
Columbo then explains that this purported victory has only come about due to "a FIFA Peace Prize recipient's threat to annihilate a civilization in order to liberate them."
The comedian next touts the administration's success in changing the Iranian regime from "an old man who hates us to his younger son, who hates us for those reasons, and that we killed his father."
Columbo acknowledges that the administration is unsure about "the status of Iran's nuclear capabilities that we obliterated last year, but were going to be a problem in two weeks," before boasting that Iran now has "more money and control over the strait than they had when they made the old deal that we ended because it was terrible."
While Columbo's video is intended as satire, much of it simply relies on arguments that the Trump administration has made throughout the course of the war, such as the president's demands that NATO allies give help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that he also says is unnecessary given US military strength.
As of this writing, the Iran War has cost US taxpayers more than $45 billion, and the Strait of Hormuz has still not reopened.
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‘This Depraved Idiot Is Out of Control’: With Middle East in Flames, Trump Eyes ‘Next Conquest’
"We cannot live this way," wrote one journalist in response to President Donald Trump's ominous threat to start another new war.
Apr 09, 2026
US President Donald Trump said late Wednesday that the American military is already looking ahead to its "next conquest" as the Middle East remains embroiled in a deadly military conflict that Trump and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unleashed six weeks ago.
In a late-night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said US forces will remain "in place" and "around" Iran until a "real agreement" is reached to end the war, as the two-week ceasefire the president and Iranian leaders announced late Tuesday hangs by a thread due to Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon.
After threatening a "bigger, and better, and stronger" assault on Iran if peace talks collapse, Trump said the US military is "Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest"—even as senior administration officials expressed concerns that the president's declarations of victory in Iran were premature.
Branislav Slantchev, an international relations expert who teaches political science at the University of California San Diego, wrote in response to Trump's post that "this depraved idiot is out of control."
"We cannot live this way," added journalist Marisa Kabas.
Trump, who has bombed more countries than any other president in modern US history despite campaigning on "no new wars," did not name any potential targets of the American military's "next conquest" in his Wednesday night post. But the president has lobbed threats against Cuba and Greenland repeatedly in recent months, threatening to seize both island nations by force. Last week, Trump asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year—a request that included tens of billions for new battleships and fighter jets.
During a speech at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Miami last month, Trump touted the US military's illegal attacks on Venezuela and Iran before declaring, "Cuba is next."
"Pretend I didn't say that," the president added.
In a separate Truth Social post Wednesday night, Trump hit out at NATO and characterized Greenland, in all-caps, as a "BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE."
Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, argued that Trump is "lashing out because his war on a whim did not result in the hoped-for ‘Venezuela’ in Iran but a historic debacle instead."
The Intercept's Nick Turse reported last month that amid the Iran war, a top Pentagon official "revealed that US wars in the Western Hemisphere are also expanding, unveiling an effort dubbed 'Operation Total Extermination.'"
Joseph Humire, the Pentagon's acting assistant secretary for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told lawmakers that the US military "supported 'bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border'" in early March, according to Turse.
"The US–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by 'ricochet effect' on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region," Turse reported. "In addition to his wars in the Western hemisphere, Trump has also launched attacks on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during his second term—most of them sites of US conflicts during the war on terror."
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