The MTG/AOC Unifier
By Wendell Potter and Joey Rettino
October 2, 2025
It’s not just the libs anymore. Some of Washington’s most prominent conservative voices are joining the calls to crack down on big health insurance companies, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who posted this on X this week:
“Americans are getting crushed by health insurance with monthly payments of $1500, $1700, and over $2000 per month.
Instead of a revolving door of foreign government leaders to the White House, I’d like to see Health Insurance CEOs in there getting chewed out on live television.
Health Insurance is out of control!!!”
That’s not a line you’d expect from one of the MAGA movement’s most vocal figures. But it’s a sign of something bigger: The political firewall insurers relied on for decades is cracking.
The “socialism” trope won’t work this time
For years, the “socialism” trope was the insurance industry’s lobbying and PR arm’s sharpest weapon. Out-of-pocket caps? Socialism. Medicare for All? Socialism. Consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act? Socialism. Any reform, frankly, that might trim profit margins? Socialism. It didn’t matter that nothing about making sure health insurance premiums go to patient care has anything to do with socialism. The attack line worked for decades and gave the industry’s friends in both political parties a soundbite that kept the industry rich – and the campaign checks flowing.
But now with calls coming from the farthest-right flank of the GOP, it seems the true cost of insurance premiums, denials and other business practices have boiled past party lines. And no one is going to call Marjorie Taylor Greene a socialist.
Health insurance reform is a bipartisan issue
Insurance industry lobbyists have long relied on Republicans and so-called corporate Democrats to protect profit margins and allow them to operate with impunity. But now even Republicans are stepping up and calling foul. It’s almost breathtaking to see how their interest has grown by leaps and bounds over the past several months.
In the last year, we’ve already seen:
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Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) lambaste the “alliance” between insurance companies and PBMs and team up with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to introduce legislation to break up that alliance;
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Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) set his sites on insurers’ Medicare Advantage businesses;
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Representative Mark Green (R-TN) introduce legislation to crack down on big insurers’ prior authorization tactics;
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Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) introduce legislation with Representative Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) to prohibit joint ownership of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and pharmacies;
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Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) introduce – with co-sponsor Jeff Merkley (D-OR) – the No UPCODE Act to change the way Medicare Advantage plans assess patients’ health risks and reduce overpayments to MA insurers;
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The House Ways and Means subcommittees on Health and Oversight, both chaired by Republicans, hold a hearing on Medicare Advantage; and
- The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, chaired by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-IL), hold a hearing that largely focused on health insurance industry vertical integration.
Part of the reason health insurers’ grip on the GOP is weakening is simple: Their voters are increasingly feeling the burn. A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that nearly half of U.S. adults say it is difficult to afford health care costs and one in four U.S. households had problems paying for health care in the the last year. Folks being crushed by $2,000 monthly premiums don’t care if the politician raising the alarm has a D or an R next to their name. They want someone — anyone — to take on the health insurance industry.
And that’s the real story here: MTG is now on the same side as AOC – and the “socialism” smear no longer sticks. And if the loudest voices on both the left and the right are saying the same thing — that health insurers are “out of control!!!“ — it may finally force Washington to do…
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