1) The Unholy Alliance Between Progressives and the Health Insurance Industrial Complex

Our Capitol Hill sources tell us that the sinister forces behind what they call an "all-out lobbying blitz" to extend supersized "emergency" and "temporary" COVID subsidies under Biden, are the insurance companies. They are the force working alongside Chuck Schumer in his government shutdown ploy to add back into the budget as much as $1 trillion in budget savings from the Big Beautiful Bill.

Why? Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid expansions haven't done much if anything to improve the nation's health, but they have made the health insurers like Blue Cross and United Health rich with taxpayer dollars. The value of health insurance stocks rose by multiple times faster than the overall stock market in the 15 years since Obamacare passed in 2010 - and jumped even more since Biden's COVID subsidies were lavished on top.

The plan is to pressure Republicans into caving to their demand for $30 billion a year in extra, additional subsidies that go directly into insurance company bank accounts.

Our friend Brian Blase of the Paragon Health Institute has shown that the alleged coverage expansion is almost entirely from people who pay exactly $0 in premiums - so virtually the entire government benefit goes to the insurers.  

The irony is that the greedy insurers are in bed with the very same liberals like Bernie Sanders whose ultimate goal is to put the insurers out of business with a single payer government-run system. It's hard to see how that could be much worse than what we have right now, which is bankrupting the country for worse health outcomes while enriching the insurers.  

2) How Will Drug Import Tariffs REDUCE Drug Prices?

Speaking of health care costs, seemingly everyone in Washington wants lower prescription drug prices. But here’s a head-scratcher: how will the 100% tariff the White House floated over the weekend LOWER prices paid by consumers?

If anyone can explain this riddle to us, we’re all ears.

3) Public Schools Face A "Perception" Problem?

For our weekly "laugh or cry" segment, we call your attention to the weekend Wall Street Journal front page:

As regular HOTLINE readers know, Arizona leads the nation in private school choice options for kids. Now one in five kids attends an alternative school and the numbers are growing rapidly every year, so THIS is the "existential" threat to the education blob:

Across the state, enrollments at district public schools are falling. Last month, superintendents gathered in Phoenix at the "Traditional Public Schools Messaging Summit" to strategize ways to improve the perception of public education. The goal: woo families and bolster political support...

"A lot of people have the perception that we're failing," said Mike Winters, the superintendent of a rural public school district west of Phoenix. "The hundreds of thousands of positive things that happen in our public schools every day are staggering. We don't do a good job of advertising them to the public because we're educators."

Sorry, no, Mr. Winters. The “P” word that you should be concerned about is not perception, but PERFORMANCE.

We've noted in recent Hotlines that test scores in America have been plummeting for almost two decades AND our students rank below average compared to other nations.  

A PR campaign won't fix that. School choice will.

4) Pay to Play - And Not Very Well

The Americans got routed and embarrassed by the European team in this past weekend’s Ryder Cup. Golf enthusiasts are scratching their heads wondering what went wrong on Long Island.

Maybe this explains it: For the first time ever in the Ryder Cup, the American players were paid ($200,000 each) to play, while the Europeans played for pride.

It all goes to show that true patriotism is a better motivator.

5) The Poor Got Poorer While Government Grew Under Biden

We at the HOTLINE were the first to report that average wage increases fell below inflation for the bottom half of workers under Joe Biden - something that is finally being reversed under President Trump.

The Census Bureau reports overall poverty and child poverty increased under Biden. Its new annual report makes clear Biden's 2021 pledge upon taking office was hollow:

"It is not enough to restore where we were prior to the pandemic. We need to build a stronger economy that does not leave anyone behind -- we need to build back better."

The $6 trillion in federal giveaways did bring poverty down briefly, but then it soared.

If you choose 2019 as your point of comparison, the increase in poverty under Biden is bad. If you choose 2020, it's catastrophic.

Even the left-wingers over at the socialist publication, Jacobin, are zinging the Biden crowd and its media enablers for hiding the problem.

You don’t have to take our word for it, Stephen Semler of the Center for International Policy, notes that those who "insisted economic conditions under Biden were great, dismissed widespread reports of economic misery by implying that people were too dense to understand their own financial situations, and enraged large swaths of the voting-eligible population with that politically toxic narrative."

6) Right On the Nose

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