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Marjorie Taylor Greene rocked the GOP world—sort of. Until Republicans prioritize keeping people alive, her protests will be for naught, and the GOP will continue to be bad for our health.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has become the darling of left-wing pundits after she straight-up thrashed her party for opposing the continuation of ACA subsidies. When subsidies end later this year, premiums for lower income enrollees will double or triple.

The beginning of the post that echoed around the Internet

While MTG's defection was not on my 2025 bingo card, we ought to read her full post on X before crushing on the soundbites:

I was not in Congress when all this Obamacare, “Affordable Care Act” bullshit started. I got here in 2021. As a matter of fact, the ACA made health insurance UNAFFORDABLE for my family after it was passed, with skyrocketing premiums higher than our house payment.

Let’s just say as nicely as possible, I’m not a fan.

But I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.

No I’m not towing the party line on this, or playing loyalty games. I’m a Republican and won’t vote for illegals to have any tax payer funded healthcare or benefits.

I’m AMERICA ONLY!!!

I’m carving my own lane.

And I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year.

Also, I think health insurance and all insurance is a scam, just be clear!

Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!

Our country sent $30 billion to Israel in 2024 alone killing countless innocent children and sent HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS to Ukraine in the past few years. By the way, I voted NO to all of that murder! America has funded the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian pensions, and Ukrainian businesses during this entire stupid war that America should have nothing to do with.

All our country does is fund foreign countries and foreign wars, and never does anything to help the American people!!!

It is absolutely shameful, disgusting, and traitorous, that our laws and policies screw the American people so much that the government is shut down right now fighting over basic issues like this.

Again, NO FUNDING FOR ILLEGALS AND ANY BENEFITS FOR THEM, BUT WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ABSOLUTELY INSANE COST OF INSURANCE FOR AMERICANS.

You don’t HATE your government enough.

I’m here in Washington DC this week to meet with anyone who is AMERICA ONLY and will work with me on a plan for AMERICANS ONLY!!!

To recap: The ACA is bullshit. Health insurance and all insurance is a scam. Healthcare is too expensive. We must fix healthcare, but until we do, ACA subsidies must remain. Israel sucks because Gazans are dying like dogs. Ukrainians can die like dogs for all I care. Illegals suck and can die like dogs. All the money we give to them could be spent on healthcare for US citizens.

I'll give MTG credit for being an attentive mom. Her concern spiked when her children were about to have their out-of-pocket healthcare expenses skyrocket. Her response is about as unhinged as anything else she's said over her years in Congress. The "keep the subsidies" piece is the saving grace, and, as befits our social media age, the only piece people are talking about.

A subsidized ACA isn't the best way to make healthcare accessible, but up to now, it's the best political solution we've been able to manage. To make healthcare better, Republicans would need to make keeping people alive and healthy their highest priority, something they have shown no interest in doing to date. At the moment, here are 20 things higher up on the Republican agenda, most of which work against keeping people alive and healthy:

Stripping away environmental protections,
Accelerating climate change,
Spreading false conspiracy theories about vaccines,
Deporting immigrant workers and splitting up families,
Sending troops to occupy blue cities,
Crushing antifa, a mythical opposition force,
Stopping chemtrails, a mythical source of toxins,
Pardoning criminals they like and indicting people they don't like,
Eviscerating the mythical deep state by firing people who keep us safe from from disease, food poisoning, and other hazards,
Opposing a ban on assault weapons,
Cutting taxes on the wealthy,
Deriding people's concern for others as woke, weak and socialist,
Making life hell for transgender persons,
Preventing women from getting abortions,
Making child labor legal again,
Punishing the President's foreign enemies by imposing tariffs paid for by Americans,
Rewarding the President's foreign friends with gifts and loans paid for by Americans,
Protecting the pedophiles named in the Epstein files,
Making it harder to vote due to mythical voter fraud in elections they lost,
Labeling everything Democrats ever did as a disaster, and worse.

Making healthcare better means statistical measurements of our health as a nation improve. It means we live longer lives, with fewer episodes of debilitating pain and illness. It means we miss fewer days from work or school due to sickness. It means more of us have access to life-giving and life-sustaining care when we need it. It means fewer among us die prematurely of fixable things.

We won't expand access to healthcare by obsessing over those whom we think shouldn't get it. We won't expand access by making up stories about "illegals," who cannot legally access it outside of emergency rooms, stealing it from citizens. We won't expand access by hating government, or by "carving out lanes" which lead nowhere.

Instead, our proper "lane" is to:

Take an evidence-based approach,
Study other systems which have moved farther than us in the direction we seek,
Study our own large-scale systems,
Create new systems which emphasize efficiency and efficacy,
Merge, expand, contract, or eliminate existing systems as evidence warrants,
Curtail pathways for abuse, while recognizing that some abuse is inevitable,
Recognize that those who have benefitted more from the robust economy of the US and the free world will have to pay more,
Eschew rhetoric and ideology in favor of practicality.
Abandon the partisan politics which have stymied our progress thus far,
Abandon political loyalty to administrative entities which drain the healthcare system without creating value.

I don't know that MTG has the chops to go farther than complain (loudly) about the status quo, using the same performative rhetoric which has sustained her career. I'm not sure she has ever explored where calling insurance a scam leads. (In the presence of compassion and progressive idealism, it leads to Bernie and AOC.) What I know is, if a political ecosystem ever evolved in which MTG, Bernie, AOC and some other people in the middle could advance the ball on healthcare, we'll be healthier for the effort.