The Daily Populous Sunday March 15th, 2026 morning edition
Authored by usatoday.com and submitted by Difficult-Bee6066

March 13, 2026, 4:31 a.m. ET

The bad news is more than 82 million Americans are having to skip meals, borrow money or cut back on utilities so they can afford health care.

The good news is the Pentagon is swimming in millions of dollars worth of ribeye steak and lobster tails, part of more than $93 billion the U.S. Department of Defense spent in September as the fiscal year closed.

So while you were putting off a necessary surgery so you could afford gas, the department overseen by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was, in one month, dropping $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts, according to a new report by the nonpartisan public-spending watchdog Open the Books.

It’s enough to make you want to grab a torch and pitchfork and start marching. Except marching may be out of the question if you haven’t been able to see a doctor about your chronic knee pain.

Millions of Americans are cutting other costs to pay for health care

A West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare report released March 12 includes a survey of nearly 20,000 adults conducted from June through August. The report notes that “roughly one-third of respondents ‒ the equivalent of more than 82 million Americans ‒ said they have made at least one trade-off with daily living expenses to afford healthcare.”

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Those tradeoffs ranged from prolonging current prescriptions to skipping meals, driving less and borrowing money. That happened the most in lower-income households, but even among respondents with annual household incomes ranging from $90,000 to $120,000, 25% had to make financial tradeoffs to cover health expenses.

Over 10% of households earning more than $240,000 annually had to cut corners to pay for health care.

That’s what we in the business of labeling things “not great” would call “not great.”

Republicans have done nothing to help with health care costs

In 2025, Republicans under President Donald Trump made Medicaid cuts amounting to $1 trillion over a decade, and did away with COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies that spiked health insurance costs for millions. Already, according to a report by Democrats on the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, 1.2 million Americans have dropped their ACA coverage.

Those cuts were framed as ways to rein in federal spending, but the federal debt has blown past $38 trillion under Trump and, according to a Congressional Budget Office report, the administration added $1 trillion to the federal deficit in just the first five months of this fiscal year.

And there is no identifiable Republican health care plan, despite repeated promises.

There is, however, as mentioned above, A LOT of lobster tail at the Pentagon – "more than $7.4 million on lobster tail in four separate months: March, May, June and October," according to the Open the Books report. There was also $15.1 million worth of ribeye steak, $124,000 worth of ice cream machines and “a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home.”

Iran war is costing billions, while even high-income Americans struggle with affordability

We also recently learned that the first week of Trump’s Iran war cost U.S. taxpayers at least $11.3 billion. And it appears that the mess is just getting started.

The West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare report notes: “As living costs continue to rise, the effects of unaffordable healthcare are not only confined to medical expenses and decisions. These findings show that healthcare costs are shaping how Americans think about the way they live, work, and plan for the future. While low-income households and those who lack health insurance are most acutely affected, middle-income earners are far from insulated. Even many Americans with six-figure incomes report making financial sacrifices, underscoring that affordability challenges are systemic rather than isolated to any one group.”

Republicans love spending money on the military, but hate helping Americans

The government, under any administration, is famous for spending too much money on stupid things. And government agencies tend to spend a lot near the end of every fiscal year, because if they don’t use all their allotted money, they lose it. It’s dumb, but I get why it happens.

But even by normal irresponsible government standards, Hegseth’s spending in September was absurd. The Open the Books report says, “There has never been anything quite like September 2025, when $93.4 billion was spent on grants and contracts. Since at least 2008 ‒ and presumably in history ‒ no federal agency has ever spent so much on grants and contracts in a single month.”

So we have billions to sling around on war and military contracts and government purchases of lobster tails and freakin’ ice-cream machines. But the Americans funding all that with their tax dollars have to skip meals that definitely wouldn’t include lobster tail or take daily prescription medication every other day to stretch them out, all so they can afford routine health care and avoid … you know … dying.

That’s something we in the business of declaring “That’s some bulls--t, right there” like to respond to by declaring: “That’s some bulls--t, right there.”

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

YesterShill on March 14th, 2026 at 21:32 UTC »

The Trump administration is the most corrupt in the history of America.

Agent-Adept on March 14th, 2026 at 21:08 UTC »

What so sad is that a large portion of the 82 million are MAGAts. As long as so many people in our country are such idiots, people like Trump and Hegseth can get away with whatever they want to.

Rude-Strawberry-6360 on March 14th, 2026 at 21:06 UTC »

I'm not worried about a special military meal before going into combat. I'm concerned far more about the price to go into combat. Weapons, missiles, ships, planes, troops. All massive amounts of unnecessary spending. But no to healthcare for Americans.

That's the infuriating part.