The American healthcare system spends $5.3 trillion a year — 18% of GDP — and somehow everyone still feels squeezed. In this deep-dive episode of Is It Bad for the Economy?, Democratic Strategist Kobi Tirey is joined by Sy Mukherjee (veteran healthcare reporter, senior life sciences communications strategist) and Banker Bill to untangle the real dysfunction: not "socialism vs. capitalism," but vertically integrated monopolies that own your insurer, your pharmacy benefits manager, and your doctor — all at once. They cover the Warren-Hawley Act, why breaking up UnitedHealth Group may need to come before Medicare for All, the 30-year chart that shows hospital costs outpacing inflation every single year except during COVID, what Democrats must get right before 2028, and what the Trump administration is accidentally doing correctly. This is the honest, unfiltered healthcare policy conversation most podcasts are too scared to have.

The entire financial world revolved around one question yesterday: Which version of Trump’s new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, was going to show up at his first Fed meeting?

OG Inflation Hawk Kevin Warsh?OrThe guy who was willing to say whatever Trump wanted to hear to give him the job?

To Democratic strategist Kobi Tirey’s shock, it was the latter. Kobi actually had some nice things to say about Trump’s new Fed Chair for once. But even if Kobi liked what he heard, Banker Bill wasn’t impressed. Warsh’s “no forward guidance” policy means his presentation was also light in substance, and inflation is still too damn high.

We invited Wall Street Journal trade reporter Gavin Bade back to do a postmortem on the trade war. His answer: it’s not over. New tariffs are coming in late July — more legally durable than before, covering almost every US trading partner, and framed around forced labor and Chinese industrial overcapacity. The kind of thing that’s hard to argue against without sounding like you support slavery.

Gavin breaks down why Jamieson Greer has quietly become the most powerful person in US trade policy, why Lutnick has been pushed to the side, and why the administration’s biggest reversal — on China — tells you everything about how they operate when they can’t coerce someone.

Plus: Is the AI bubble about to pop and are all these IPOs the insiders cashing out before people notice? Credit card delinquencies, car repos, and why the stock market’s gains are masking a deteriorating picture for the middle 80%. And the data center question Democrats are fumbling — with a closing argument from Kobi on the window that’s rapidly closing.

Is It Bad for the Economy? is the podcast where a Democratic strategist, an anonymous Wall Street banker, and occasionally a very good journalist try to figure out who’s actually winning and losing in this economy.