‘Half-baked’ GOP healthcare gambit exposed as scheme to enrich insurance giants

US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have made a show of criticizing insurance company greed as they stand firm against extending Affordable Care Act tax credits and offer ill-formed alternatives.

But a report published Wednesday by the office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) explains how a scheme endorsed by Trump and some top Republicans would further enrich insurance giants and big banks.

The report focuses on growing GOP support for a proposal that would give Americans money in tax-advantaged vehicles such as health savings accounts (HSAs) to help cover out-of-pocket costs. Last week, Trump championed the idea in the Oval Office, characterizing the proposal as a way to “forget this Obamacare madness.”

In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump railed against “BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES” and doubled down on the idea of funding health savings accounts instead of extending the enhanced ACA tax credits.

But Wyden’s report argues that “no matter how Republicans design their plan, their promise to take money out of the hands of big insurance companies and put it in the hands of patients will go unfulfilled, because the very arrangements they tout are administered by large financial institutions and the same big insurance companies.”

The report notes that Optum Bank, a subsidiary of the corporate behemoth UnitedHealth Group, is one of the nation’s largest administrators of HSAs and would be well-positioned to profit from the Republican plan.

“The numerous fees OptumBank charges, including a $20 Outbound Transfer Fee, a several-dollar monthly account maintenance fee, and a $2.50 ATM Transaction fee, flow directly out of consumers’ and patients’ pockets and into the coffers of the nation’s largest health insurer,” the report observes. “Even a fraction of these revenues adds up to massive profits.”

“While some big insurance companies own HSA providers directly, others partner with large financial institutions to operate similar arrangements. Centene, for example, partners with Fidelity; Anthem partners with Bank of America,” the report continues. “The common theme across these arrangements is massive profits for financial institutions and big insurance companies.”

Wyden’s report came as congressional Republicans worked to translate Trump’s all-caps social media ramblings into coherent policy. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over healthcare, is leading the effort as tens of millions of people brace for massive premium increases stemming from Republicans’ refusal to extend enhanced ACA subsidies.

Cassidy has explained to reporters that the emerging GOP plan would entail Americans using existing ACA tax credits—not the enhanced subsidies that are set to lapse at the end of the year—to purchase high-deductible “bronze” plans on the insurance marketplace.

HSA funding from the federal government would then help enrollees cover out-of-pocket costs (HSA funds generally cannot be used to cover monthly premiums). Under the recently enacted Trump-GOP budget law, tax-advantaged HSAs are now available to everyone who buys a bronze plan on the ACA marketplace.

The average deductible for a bronze plan is $7,476 in 2026.

“Half-baked ideas that put more taxpayer dollars into health tax accounts will enrich big banks and insurance companies while saddling Americans with high premiums and deductibles,” Wyden said in a statement on Wednesday. “Sending a few thousand dollars to Americans isn’t going to do them much good when they face a giant medical bill for a serious health diagnosis or even routine but expensive care, like giving birth in a hospital.”

In a Fox News appearance on Wednesday, Cassidy likened his vision of an ideal health insurance marketplace to bargain-hunting for shampoo.

“By giving the patient the money herself... she becomes a wiser consumer,” said Cassidy. “If she goes and gets two types of shampoo and one’s a dollar cheaper, she’ll get the cheaper one and the other one lowers their price.”

Ryan Cooper, managing editor of The American Prospect, wrote in response to the GOP healthcare scramble that “the stupidity is the point.”

“For decades now, the Republican Party has been dedicated to the proposition that rich people are too highly taxed and the working and middle classes get too many benefits from the government. With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, they have finally caught the car,” Cooper wrote Tuesday. “Medicaid and Obamacare have been slashed to free up budget headroom for tax cuts heavily slanted to the wealthy.”

“Republicans don’t have a ‘healthcare plan’ per se because this is their plan: to take your healthcare funding and give it to Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the rest of the fascist billionaire class,” he added.