Bettino is a volunteer in White Plains, N.Y., for Wolf-PAC, which seeks to build grassroots support for a constitutional amendment permitting more regulation of money in politics.
Imagine emerging from a life-saving medical procedure only to receive bills totaling $80,000 — despite having health insurance. Or, like Californian Tom Saputo, getting a surprise bill for $51,000 after being air-lifted to a hospital for an emergency double-lung transplant. After insurance, he still owed $11,000.
Many of you may not have to imagine these nightmare scenarios, but they're all too real. And whether or not you've experienced horror stories like these, we've all been victimized by the exorbitant costs of health insurance. Legalized bribery is the reason.
The United States now has the only profit-driven health care system in the world, so it's unsurprising we also have the most expensive medical care of any country. In fact, 18 percent of our entire economy ($3.2 trillion) went to health care in 2015, averaging about $10,000 a person.
Why is health care and insurance in this country so much more expensive than elsewhere? It's the intrusion of big money in politics.
We use the euphemism "campaign contributions" to disguise the nefarious truth. Corporations can now make unlimited contributions to elected politicians through the use of the political action committees.
Four of the biggest health insurance companies — Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health and Cigna— and their employees gave $4.5 million to 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns, with just over half of the cash to Democrats.
Paco Fabian, director of campaigns at Our Revolution, told The Hill, "they're influencing both sides and they're doing it so that regardless of who wins, they continue to influence politics and policy." The same was true four years before, when Donald Trump received $1.3 million from the insurance industry while Hillary Clinton brought in a cool $3.3 million. Donations from the health sector at large were gargantuan: $26.4 million for Clinton and $5.8 million for Trump.
Donations made to politicians are not random charity; they are strategic and expected to procure a hefty return on investment. Recipients are not naïve to this, and they frequently cater to the interests of their most generous donors.
How do "campaign contributions" impact health costs? Quite directly, it turns out, in the form of legislation. In each of the previous two years, the Trump administration allowed insurance companies to raise their premiums 15 percent with no explanation, increasing the likelihood of price spikes for consumers. The previous president, backed by Congress, also weakened regulation of insurers, increased their allowed profit-margins and permitted more flexibility in scaling back benefits — all policies promoted by the health insurance lobby.
Chairman Richard Neal of the House Ways and Means Committee, a gatekeeper of all health legislation, has been the third largest recipient of insurance money in the House. But health insurance companies aren't the only ones with a vested interest in health care industry profits: Private equity group Blackstone and various for-profit hospital groups were major contributors to the Massachusetts Democrat in the last election. Blackstone has lobbied hard to prevent a resolution on surprise medical billing because it owns the physician-staffing company TeamHealth, which profits mightily from this practice.
In 2019 Neal blocked a bipartisan bill aimed at controlling hospitals' ability to send these huge out-of-the-blue bills to patients. In early December Neal once again defended the interests of his private equity donors, putting forth a proposal they endorsed as an alternative to the more aggressive original bill.
As the unfortunate truth of our corrupt system, politicians acting on behalf of their donors is the rule, not the exception.
The average deductible for Americans in 2019 was $4,544, meaning millions of insured patients still paid almost $5,000 out-of-pocket for their health care. Furthermore, many plans don't cover mental health, dentistry or life-saving surgeries deemed "elective" by the insurance companies. For families, the cost of health coverage now exceeds a whopping $20,000. In the past decade, health insurance costs skyrocketed 55 percent, almost double the increase in the median wage over the same time period.
Predictably, health costs are the number one reason Americans declare bankruptcy. It was estimated in 2019 that two-thirds of all bankruptcy filers cited medical expenses or illness-related work loss, not dissimilar to rates before implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The health insurance companies, meanwhile, raked in $35.7 billion in profits the same year.
Regardless of your preferred solution for outrageous health insurance costs, we can all agree that progress is not being made. To address this and all the issues we face, my organization is tackling the root cause: political corruption. Most Americans agree that big donors have outsized influence and want to limit campaign spending. With the grip special interests have on Congress, an amendment to the Constitution ensuring elections free from corruption is the only proven solution.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.