During the federal government shutdown, Republican lawmakers including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) asserted that the GOP was working on providing an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. (Democrats holding out for an extension of ACA tax subsidies was a key reason for the shutdown, though the shutdown ended without major Republican concessions on the issue.)
This week President Donald Trump teased a potential solution, sharing a text message he received from U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who pitched his idea of allowing Americans to collectively buy health insurance through Amazon and big box retailers like Costco.
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who owns Cost Plus Drugs, responded to Paul’s plan by writing: “If you plan on the existing big insurance carriers offering plans to retailers and associations, this plan will be garbage.”
On Thursday in Washington, D.C., U.S. Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN) also complained against big insurance companies, saying they “are jerking up the prices on everything,” and suggests that both Republicans and Democrats “get out of bed with these dadgum lobbyists, get the doctors and the patients in the room and let them work it out. We don’t need a middle man. It’s just like the mob, they just take their cut off the top.”
“Get insurance companies out of it. We don’t need a middle man. They’re like the mob, taking their cut off the top.”@RepTimBurchett unwittingly makes the case for MEDICARE FOR ALL as Republicans flail for a way to deal with skyrocketing health care costs.
(H/T @PabloReports) pic.twitter.com/ufoCB3Rmcw
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) December 4, 2025
The Tennessee Holler amplified the video and wrote: “@RepTimBurchett unwittingly makes the case for MEDICARE FOR ALL as Republicans flail for a way to deal with skyrocketing health care costs.”
Burchett, of course, did not go that far — identifying the problem he wants fixed but not the solution for it. Medicare For All is a policy proposing a single-payer, government-funded healthcare system that eliminates private insurance while offering comprehensive benefits and a broad choice of medical providers. That would put patients and doctors “in the same room” as Burchett desires, and also get rid of the “middle man” insurers that the Congressman likens to the “mob.”
But Medicare For All, which advocates say is supported by 70% of Americans, needs federal funding to work — and Burchett, while wanting to cut the insurance carriers out of the picture, doesn’t say how they will be replaced. Other statements by the Congressman on the issue don’t contemplate increasing government spending to fill the gap.
“Our government is quickly leading our Social Security and Medicare programs down the path to bankruptcy through reckless spending habits,” he writes on his website.