How to fail at healthcare, education, and technology in one week

Sometimes it feels like governments are actively trying to make everything worse. “Affordable” healthcare that no one can afford. AI regulations designed to ensure 450 million Europeans are the last people on earth to benefit from the most revolutionary technology in decades. And the teachers unions that fund these politicians doing everything in their power to trap students in failing schools.

Here are a few of this week’s stories in case you missed them.

20 million Americans just found out what “affordable” healthcare actually costs

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 with a promise that healthcare would finally be affordable. It wasn’t. Since the ACA became law, the average family health insurance premium has nearly doubled— from $13,770 to almost $27,000 a year.

So by 2021, the government had to introduce enhanced subsidies just to keep Obamacare’s own premiums from crushing the very same people that it was supposed to help. At the peak, 24 million people were enrolled and 92% of them were receiving taxpayer-funded premium subsidies.

The “Affordable” Care Act could only be sustained by massive government handouts on top of the massive government program.

When those subsidies were set to expire at the end of 2025, the same Democrats who created this mess triggered a 43-day government shutdown, fighting to keep the money flowing rather than fix the program. They lost. The subsidies expired on December 31, 2025.

Now the results are in.

Average annual premium payments more than doubled— from $888 to $1,904. Of the 24 million people enrolled in ACA plans last year, roughly 2.4 million have dropped health insurance entirely. Another 5 million switched to other coverage. And 17% of those still hanging on aren’t sure they can afford premiums for the rest of the year— meaning the exodus is far from over.

More than half of those who kept their plans say they’re cutting back on food and basic household items just to cover healthcare.

This is simple economics. When the government shows up with a bottomless wallet, the entire industry restructures around the guaranteed revenue. Prices rise as a result.

This has happened literally every single time the government has stepped in to make something more affordable— education, child care, housing, and now medical insurance.

The “Affordable” Care Act was never affordable. It was subsidized. And now tens of millions of Americans are learning the difference.

Finally, the Teachers Unions Lose and Students Win

Stacy Davis Gates makes over $270,000 a year running the Chicago Teachers Union. This is the same school district where only 43% of students can read at grade level and 27% are proficient in math— and that’s AFTER the state lowered proficiency standards.

The district’s budget has nearly doubled since 2012, i.e. the more money they spend, the worse the results.

So naturally Ms. Gates got a promotion. Last October she was unanimously elected president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers (i.e. statewide union), giving her control over 103,000 members in Illinois.

She has wasted no time using that control to fight a federal new school choice program which would give parents the opportunity to move their kids from failing schools.

Rather than acknowledge that her schools are rampant failures and that parents should have the right to move their children to better performing schools, Gates has called school choice “the choice of racists” and formally urged Illinois not to participate.

I’m not even sure what that means; she seems to be asserting that the teachers are exclusively black, the fed-up parents are exclusively white… and that ethnicity is the reason parents are upset, i.e. NOT the fact that their kids can’t read. This is a clinical level of insanity.

Under Stacy Davis Gates, her CTU’s political action committee donated $72,500 to State Senator Graciela Guzman— who, literally on the same day as the donation, submitted a bill to ban Illinois from participating in the school choice program.

Nonetheless, voters in more than 30 counties weighed in on whether Illinois should opt in — and the measure passed in every jurisdiction that has reported results so far, with support ranging from 56% to 77%.

Inject a little free-market competition into a system that has failed students for decades. Let parents choose. Let schools compete. The only people opposed are the ones who benefit from a captive audience.

Oh, and Gates sends her own child to a $16,000-per-year private school.

So she clearly understands that school choice works. She just doesn’t want anyone else to have the right to choose.

The EU “simplifies” its AI regulations — by making them more complicated

Only the European Union could use the word “simplification” to describe what happened on Tuesday.

The European Parliament voted 101-9 to adopt changes to its Artificial Intelligence Act — a law that runs 458 pages, contains 180 recitals, 113 articles, and 13 annexes, totaling roughly 88,000 words.

The “simplification” modifies 30 articles, adds a brand-new banned category of AI, and creates three different compliance timelines instead of one — November 2026, December 2027, and August 2028.

Of course, the European Commission itself missed its own February 2026 deadline to publish guidance on how companies should comply. The standardization bodies tasked with developing technical standards also missed their deadline. At least 12 member states missed the deadline to appoint enforcement authorities. And 19 hadn’t even appointed a single point of contact.

In short, regulators who don’t adhere to their own deadlines have written rules based on standards that don’t yet exist, enforced by authorities who haven’t been appointed, in a law that hasn’t been fully implemented. And they just voted to “simplify” it all by adding more rules.

The damage is already real.

Apple delayed launching AI features in Europe, only rolling out a partial version months after American users had access. Meta delayed AI features and refused to sign the EU’s voluntary AI code of practice.

Google DeepMind’s head of public policy said the Act “was devised before ChatGPT had even come out.” Meta’s public policy director said “European citizens and consumers suffer” as a result of the regulations.

The specific rules are even more absurd than the process.

The EU classified healthcare, education, and employment as “high-risk” AI domains — the very sectors where AI could deliver the greatest benefits to ordinary people.

An AI system that helps a doctor diagnose a rare disease faster? Forget it. An AI tutor that detects when a student is struggling and adjusts its teaching? Banned outright (the EU prohibits emotion-recognition AI in schools). A recruitment tool that matches workers to better jobs? Subject to fines of up to 35 million euros or 7% of global revenue.

This is technology that could raise living standards, increase productivity, improve healthcare, and make personalized education accessible to millions.

Instead, Europe has ensured its 450 million citizens will be the last people on earth to benefit from it.

Source

Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur and permanent traveler. His daily letter is both educational and entertaining, and we suggest that those who want unbiased, actionable information about global opportunities sign up for Sovereign Man’s free, actionable newsletter at http://www.SovereignMan.com.

From Simon Black of SovereignMan.com

Source: https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/how-to-fail-at-healthcare-education-and-technology-in-one-week-154575/