The Rich Can Appear Poor

I’ve been listening to all the noise about “Obamacare premiums exploding in 2026,” and the more I hear it framed, the more it feels like we’re talking past the real issue. This isn’t about poor people losing healthcare. It isn’t even about the Affordable Care Act collapsing. It’s about fairness, plain and simple, and about a system that pretends income tells the whole story when it clearly doesn’t.

Here’s the reality that rarely gets said out loud. Under current rules, eligibility for government-subsidized healthcare is based almost entirely on reported income, not net worth. That sounds reasonable until you think about who has the most control over their income. It’s not the hourly worker. It’s not the salaried employee with a W-2. It’s business owners, investors, early retirees, and people with significant assets who can legally dial their income up or down from year to year.

You can own multiple properties, have a seven-figure portfolio, substantial cash reserves, and still qualify for free or heavily subsidized government health insurance if your taxable income falls under certain thresholds. Not because you’re struggling, but because you structured your income that way. That’s not a loophole. That’s the system working exactly as written.

During the COVID years, subsidies were expanded even further. The income caps were lifted, and suddenly people who were clearly middle-class or upper-middle-class were paying little or nothing for coverage. Now those temporary subsidies are expiring, and we’re being told this is a crisis of affordability. For some people, the jump is real. But let’s be honest about who many of those people are. They’re not destitute. They’re often asset-rich households who benefited from a temporary policy that was never meant to be permanent.

And if we’re being truly honest, there’s a bigger, quieter goal sitting underneath all of this. The real endgame isn’t just expanded subsidies — it’s moving everyone toward government-paid healthcare. We’ve heard this before. It used to be called “universal healthcare,” an idea that failed politically back in the 1980s. The branding has changed, the path has changed, but the destination hasn’t. And once healthcare is fully controlled and paid for by the government, the next question becomes unavoidable: who are you voting for each election? It won’t be the people fighting against the system that now controls your coverage.

What bothers me isn’t helping people. I have zero problem with that. What bothers me is the inconsistency. If you apply for SNAP, welfare, or other assistance programs, assets matter. Savings matter. Property matters. Vehicles matter. The government looks at the whole picture. But when it comes to healthcare subsidies, we pretend net worth doesn’t exist, even though healthcare is one of the largest public expenditures we have.

That disconnect creates two problems. First, it shifts costs onto working families who don’t have the ability to manipulate income. They pay full freight through employer plans or taxes while watching others with far more resources qualify for government help. Second, it undermines public trust. People can sense when a system isn’t fair, even if they can’t explain all the mechanics behind it.

I’m not arguing that healthcare should be ripped away from anyone. I’m arguing that if taxpayer money is involved, the rules should reflect reality. Wealth is part of reality. Assets are part of reality. The ability to self-insure is part of reality. Ignoring those facts doesn’t make the system compassionate; it makes it distorted.

If we want an honest conversation about healthcare costs, we should start by admitting this: tying subsidies solely to income rewards those who can game income and punishes those who can’t. That’s backwards. A fair system would look at both income and net worth, just as we already do in other assistance programs. Not to exclude people unfairly, but to ensure help goes where it’s genuinely needed.

Until we do that, we’ll keep having the same argument every few years. Headlines will scream. Politicians will posture. And the public will be left arguing over premium increases while quietly ignoring the deeper imbalance sitting right in front of us.