Looking for Democratic voters for a midterm opinion piece. Interviews are 20–30 minutes by video or phone. What issues are driving your vote? DM if you’re open to talking.

There's about a one in 10 chance the hospital in your town is owned by people trying to double their money in seven years. If you live in Kentucky, your chances are one in six. In New Mexico, closer to one in three. For about 15 years, private equity firms have been quietly buying up hospitals. And physician practices. And dental offices, and nursing homes, and just about anything to do with healthcare. Why? Because they believe they'll make more money there than they can on Wall St. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it's worth asking a few questions. Why does healthcare cost so much more, relatively speaking, than it did 15 years ago? Is it easier to get an appointment, or does it take longer? Do you get more face time with the doctor, or less? Do doctors and nurses seem happier with their work, or more stressed? And where is all that money—$5.7 trillion every single year—going? theepochtimes.com/article/mo…

Most people don’t know this. Medicare’s prescription drug premiums have been subsidized for two years. That’ll surprise a lot of people who pay for Medicare Part D. They never see that money. It gets paid straight to insurance companies. But it’s going away in 2027 because it’s no longer needed, according to the federal government. Medicare started these subsidies—paid directly to insurance companies—in 2025 because the market was in a tizzy after all the changes from the Inflation Reduction Act. That capped insulin prices at $35, and limited copayments to $2,000 a year. But drug makers didn’t lower their prices on all medications. That cost just got transferred to insurers. Rates were going to jump like 40% in one year. So Medicare stepped in with these temporary subsidies to keep the premiums down. The program was going to last three years, but the administration is stopping it after two years. The market has had enough time to adjust, the government says, and some experts agree. Dr. Mehmet Oz said premiums for Part D should go up less than $10 a month for most people. Others disagree. After all, drug prices are still climbing, and expensive drugs like GLP-1s are getting more and more popular. So premiums will go up. But we won’t know how much until the new rates are published in late September. theepochtimes.com/us/medicar…

How many of those are real people? That’s what some health care experts are debating about the drop in Obamacare enrollment. The feds and some think tanks say the drop is from purging fraudulent or duplicate enrollees. Others say the Big Beautiful Bill forced millions out of coverage. Benchmark premiums did increase by 25 percent this year. And many people lost their subsidy or had it cut when the Covid-19 era enhancements expired. But 40 percent of Obamacare enrollees never filed a single claim in 2025. Not one doctor visit. Not one prescription. No trips to urgent care. People buy fire insurance knowing they’ll probably never use it. But people do get sick. Their kids get ear infections and need vaccinations for school. More than half of US adults take daily medication for a chronic condition. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Was there fraud in Obamacare enrollment? The evidence overwhelmingly points to that. Do Americans find it harder and harder to pay the cost of health insurance? There’s no denying that either. theepochtimes.com/us/obamaca…

Medicaid fraud is not what you think it is. Most people think the fraud perpetrated by poor people who scam the system out of free healthcare. Sure, that happens. Misreporting income to gain coverage is not unheard of. Small change. But the really big dollars are being sucked up by organized crime. And a lot of them are actually healthcare professionals. Here’s how it works. Find a vulnerable population—people with addictions, homeless folk, elderly immigrants—and bribe them in exchange for their healthcare number. Et voila! Now you bill Medicaid or Medicare for millions of services never rendered. Enroll them in a phony hospice. Set them up in a non-existent drug treatment program. Bill for adult daycare services in their name. The taxpayer dollars roll in. Sadly, some doctors and other professionals are in on this. Skin grafts—never provided, over-provided, or insanely priced—have emerged as one of the most lucrative healthcare scams. It’s not the little guy getting a free doctor appointment that should worry you. It’s the criminal gangs and corrupt providers who are taking your tax dollars by the billion. theepochtimes.com/article/fa…

Some of the best monuments in Washington are the least known. This one is a carillon--yes, a bell tower--in memory of our 27th POTUS, William Howard Taft of Ohio. Taft was the hand-picked successor to Teddy Roosevelt, who later decided he didn't like Taft thinking for himself and undermined his administration--even running against him in 1912. They both lost to Woodrow Wilson. If you like presidential politics, keep watching. That movie gets remade from time to time.

World Cup fan discovers @bucees. New life begins.

Fair enough, but will it work? The Trump admin is pushing for "transparency" in hospital pricing. About 500 hospitals got warned: Post your prices online—all of them—or pay big fines. That’s been required since 2021, but some still don’t. But even when they do, the files are mostly useless to consumers. They’re huge “machine readable” files that are difficult for anybody with a home computer to download—and harder to read. The AHA told me that most hospitals are complying, and most of the deficiencies noted were small, technical fixes. Even so, the AHA added that “We also know the current system is not working as well as it could for patients,” and that they’re working to improve price transparency. That’s all good. But many Americans still don’t understand what they’re being charged before they go in for surgery—let alone how much insurance will pay, when, what their copay is going to be, and … why the whole thing costs so much. theepochtimes.com/us/trump-a…

People get this wrong about healthcare. Everybody says it’s “unaffordable,” and it is. Usually, that means the government isn’t paying enough—so we have to pay too much. But who says that about cars, or gas, or groceries? Here’s what unaffordability really means. It means the prices are too high. If you’re selling cars and nobody’s buying, do you ask the government to pay half the cost? Healthcare costs $27,000 per year per family in the US. That’s like buying a new car every single year. It adds up to $5.3 trillion a year—more than 3x the federal budget for discretionary spending. The real question isn’t why the government pays so little. It’s why the hospitals charge so much. theepochtimes.com/article/ho…

Tiananmen Square massacre--37 years ago today. theepochtimes.com/article/ex…

That's @mada7ina, one of our best photographers, center-left in the top-right photo. @EpochTimes journalists are on the Hill every day.

Can you imagine paying $350,000 a year--every year--on one Rx med? ://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/the-loophole-drug-makers-use-to-keep-prices-high-2-post-6040571?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=twitter&rs=SHRNCMMW

I've seen these arguments play out in every decade since the '60s. I'll bet you've seen them beofre too. theepochtimes.com/us/three-d…