At a House Rules Committee meeting this week, U.S. Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) complained about the U.S. health care system and the lawmakers who aren’t doing anything productive to fix the system.
Roy said: “Now we’re sitting here, and we’re listening to nonsense about health care, where my colleagues on the other side of the aisle sit here saying, ‘Well, you guys aren’t doing anything about the massive, expensive cost of health care.’ Why do you think it’s expensive? Because you literally cut a deal with insurance companies to run health care…
“And yet, Republicans will complain about it, and then they’ll offer milquetoast garbage like we’re offering this week, and then go home at Christmas and say, ‘Look at what we’re doing, we’re campaigning on reducing health care.’
“Well, congratulations. At some point people will look at this body and say, ‘Maybe we should get rid of all 435 members of the House and all 100 members of the Senate, and start over, because Congress is literally failing the American people.’”
Chip. You and your fellow legislators can call for DOJ and FTC investigations of those behemoth insurance companies.
You can’t complain about the power insurance companies have, and stop there.
The only way to fix this is to break them up https://t.co/BqBhbKSmEb
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) December 17, 2025
Billionaire Mark Cuban, founder of Cost Plus Drugs, replied to Roy: “Chip. You and your fellow legislators can call for DOJ and FTC investigations of those behemoth insurance companies. You can’t complain about the power insurance companies have, and stop there. The only way to fix this is to break them up”.
[NOTE: Anthony Hopper who teaches healthcare administration at ECPI University in Virginia replied to Roy’s comments: “He’s right about one thing. We should clean House (and Senate).”]
Cuban has aimed the same arrow at another Republican lawmaker who has suggested an Obamacare alternative, warning Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that his plan would be essentially “garbage” if the insurance giants maintained their present position in the health care ecosystem.
Addressing Paul’s proposal to leverage the bargaining power of individuals grouped through giant retailers like Amazon and Costco or nonprofits like churches and alumni associations to replace the government-run ACA marketplace, Cuban wrote to the Senator: “If you plan on the existing big insurance carriers offering plans to retailers and associations, this plan will be garbage.”
(Note: That Cuban and Roy both decided on the word “garbage” to describe the new proposals indicates the lack of substantive innovation on the issue.)
Cuban told Paul that if his retail insurance market idea were to take hold, “the big insurance carriers will not only do what they do today, they will create more information asymmetry for the associations and retailers than what we see today. Which will allow them to do more of all the [expletive] up things they do today.”
The billionaire recited for Paul a tale that Roy would agree with, at least as far as where blame gets assigned.
“The ACA has failed because you and your peers, on both sides, did nothing to stop insurance carriers and hospital networks from becoming the behemoths they are today,” Cuban wrote. “They will continue to underpay or no pay everyone they can.”