Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's estimated cost last week for President Donald Trump's senseless and ceaseless war in Iran got me thinking about priorities.
Hegseth, testifying in Congress on July 21, said five months of war had cost America $37.5 billion, and he was asking for an additional $67 billion to keep fighting Iran.
I have a reflexive question when I see colossal numbers like that in government spending: What could that have paid for instead?
Here's the answer: Millions of Americans could have kept their health insurance.
Trump is happy to waste money that could have helped Americans
Trump, who campaigned in 2024 on a promise of making health care more affordable, sided with his Republican allies in Congress in allowing federal subsidies in place since 2021 for the Affordable Care Act – known as Obamacare
– to expire at the end of 2025.
The Congressional Budget Office in September predicted that keeping those subsidies in place would increase the deficit by about $350 billion over a decade – so $35 billion per year – and also would have added 3.8 million Americans enrolled in Obamacare.
That means Trump just blew more money in five months of war with Iran – if you can believe Hegseth's numbers are accurate – than it would have cost us to keep millions of Americans insured for this entire year.
Here's what happened instead: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently reported hat Obamacare enrollment dropped from 24.2 million in 2025 to 19.2 million in February.
The why here is obvious. KFF, a health policy nonprofit, predicted in September that the expiration of the subsidies would increase the premiums of Obamacare enrollees by 114%.
KFF on July 28 reported that every state in America except New Mexico saw a year-over-year drop in enrollment.
Obamacare helped Americans. So Trump had to weaken it.
Let's pause here to state the obvious: Trump hates Obamacare because it is named for his original political nemesis, the president who got that legislation passed, Barack Obama. And Trump still seethes that his first-term effort to kill Obamacare failed in Congress.
That's a problem for Trump now, because voters like Obamacare. KFF, which compiles a tracking poll of public opinion about Obamacare, found that 61% of Americans had a favorable view of the program as of March, while 38% had an unfavorable view.
Add health care to the list of things Trump has made more expensive in 2026, as the midterm elections loom in fewer than 100 days and Democrats hope to win control of the U.S. House and maybe the U.S. Senate.
The war in Iran has already driven up the cost of gas and any products that are transported in gas-powered vehicles.
Trump's typical tactic in a pinch like this is to make sweeping and vague promises. So he's been wrapping up rally speeches lately with a vow to pass the "great health care plan."
Republicans still don't care about your health care
Trump, speaking in Michigan on July 27, tucked that into the 59th minute of a 65-minute speech. His plan would somehow stop insurance companies from making money and give it instead to Americans to pay for health care. And he suggested that Democrats oppose that because insurance companies "own the Democrats."
Quick fact-check: OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks political spending, found that political action committees for the insurance industry donated more to Republican candidates than to Democratic candidates in 2023 and 2024, following a pattern that has existed since 1992.
By Trump's logic – if you dare call it that – his Republican allies in Congress are just as owned by that industry as Democrats.
Trump, speaking in Georgia on July 22, also wrapped up his speech by promising to pass the "great health care plan" while criticizing Obamacare like this: "It's gone up through the roof. It's a total disaster."
What Trump didn't say? He and his Republican allies in Congress are responsible for that disaster.
Trump introduced the "Great Healthcare Plan" in a call to Congress and cited it on Feb. 24 in his State of the Union address. But it's not one of his bangers, an issue he consistently harps on.
So what is the plan? A White House official who didn't want to be named in this column pointed me toward five pieces of legislation in the House and one in the Senate that would impact price transparency in health care, cutting costs for prescriptions and making more medications available without a prescription.
Three of those proposals were introduced as legislation this month, while three were introduced last month and one was introduced in March.
So Trump's health care plan is really a hodgepodge of proposals in various states of legislative consideration. No wonder he only drops it in at the tail end of his speeches, where he deals with the things he thinks he needs to say, not the things he really wants to say.
All the while, millions of Americans are dropping their health insurance plans because Trump and his Republican allies in Congress chose to drive up the costs, and are now blowing that money instead on a war in Iran with no end in sight.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump blew billions on Iran instead of keeping you insured | Opinion
