Why is President Trump’s pollster encouraging Republicans to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies? Maybe because insurance companies are paying him to do so.
One of two new organizations hired Tony Fabrizio to conduct survey research regarding the enhanced subsidies this summer. The organizations — Plymouth Union Public Advocacy, which bills itself as a 501(c)(4) entity, and Plymouth Union Public Research, advertised as a 501(c)(6) group — appear to have been founded by three former Republican political operatives earlier this year.
Of course, merely creating new entities doesn’t mean one is serving as a “dark money” conduit for health insurers or other special interests. But neither organization responded to my requests for comment or for information about their tax filings, which they are legally required to disclose upon public request. (If they continue to ignore my requests, I plan to file complaints with the Internal Revenue Service.)
Moreover, their arguments for extending the enhanced subsidies are not just biased but contradictory, almost to the point of incoherence. Combine new organizations with a refusal to disclose publicly required information and illogical policy positions, and it seems a fair question to ask if something is rotten in Denmark.
Biased Polling
In July, the research organization paid for a polling memo by Fabrizio Ward, which surveyed voters in several congressional “swing” districts about the Obamacare subsidies. (Fabrizio Ward also did not respond to my request for comment about whether it was accepting money from health insurers, directly or indirectly.) And to say that the polling comes off as biased in favor of a subsidy extension would put it mildly, as the questions highlight the supposed benefits of the subsidies without mentioning any drawbacks.
For instance, at no point in time do the questions mention the sizable cost of a subsidy extension — estimated at $350 billion, plus interest, over 10 years. Nor do they discuss the significant amounts of fraud that the Congressional Budget Office and others have found in the program, or mention that the subsidies fund plans that cover abortions and transgender operations.
The questions also advertise the supposed doubling of premiums if the subsidies expire — a talking point cited by the left, but a highly inaccurate and misleading one at that:
Current estimates say if the tax credit working families and individuals use to purchase health insurance directly expires, premiums will double, and five million families will lose their coverage. If the Republican candidate for Congress in your district allowed the healthcare premium tax credit to expire, would you be more likely to vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate?
Do you want to vote for someone who causes premiums to double and throws millions of families off of coverage? That’s about as unbiased a framing as When did you stop beating your wife? And while it doesn’t prove that Fabrizio Ward, or the organizations paying the firm, were funded by insurers, health insurance companies could hardly ask for a description more favorable to their interests.
Illogical Memo
A policy memo the research group released in July similarly strains credulity. It’s advertised as “a policy and political remedy to the Left’s Medicaid attack,” but does so largely by reiterating those attacks, then pitches an Obamacare bailout as the “solution.”
The memo’s conclusion demonstrates its general incoherence:
Given the rising costs and growing participation in Medicaid, it is understandable why Republicans in Congress sought to cut program spending as a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. However, the $1 trillion in cuts contained in the bill may prove highly unpopular. Medicaid reductions will only face more criticism as 7.8 million lose their health coverage over the next decade.
Republicans needed to reduce Medicaid spending — but these “cuts” will prove politically unpopular. To which there lies an obvious response: Maybe if you stopped referring to these policies as “cuts,” they might not be as unpopular as you claim they are.
In fact, the memo uses the word “cuts” regarding Medicaid spending no fewer than 15 separate times in a seven-page document. It includes another five references to “spending reductions,” while simultaneously admitting that “even after [the reconciliation bill’s] reforms, Medicaid spending will continue to increase next year and every year thereafter.” So why does the memo still use the left’s dishonest framing about “cuts” to Medicaid?
It gets worse. The memo includes this graphic, which contains so many errors it’s hard to list them all:
Most notably, this graphic and the memo as a whole assume that all Obamacare subsidies expire on Dec. 31. The memo discusses “the $5,023 increase in health care costs if premium tax credits expire,” but even groups on the left believe the enhanced subsidies’ expiration will cost households about $1,000 — or roughly one-fifth the effect that this purportedly “conservative” organization claims.
The Medicaid numbers in the above graphic are also inaccurate, on two fronts. They exclude the state portion of Medicaid costs and ignore the fact that Medicaid also covers seniors and individuals with disabilities — groups that have incredibly higher per-person costs than able-bodied Medicaid recipients or most Exchange enrollees. If the group wanted to come up with a way to claim that “Exchange coverage is cheaper than Medicaid,” it could scarcely have come up with a sloppier or more dishonest way of doing so.
Media Give Shady Group a Pass
As important a question as who is funding this organization’s factually questionable activities: If I could so readily pick apart the obvious holes in its arguments, why can’t — or more like won’t — the media? Capitol Hill publications continue to cite its work, without asking 1) where this organization came from, 2) who funds it, and 3) why this purportedly “conservative” entity is spouting an illogical message.
A combination of wanting to stay in the good graces of deep-pocketed insurers, coupled with their generally leftist instincts, may explain why reporters for publications like Politico have let groups like Plymouth Union Public Research skate. After all, as Politico well knows, the real “industry” in Washington isn’t government — it’s selling out. But that doesn’t make it right — for Politico or any individual or entity using shady organizations secretly to take money from the insurance industry.
