By Sam Kuebler as seen in Washington Signal.
Republicans have spent years telling Americans that government makes too many things too expensive.
This November, voters are going to expect us to prove we meant it.
Affordability has become the defining kitchen-table issue of the 2026 midterms. Families do not need an economist to tell them what they already see every month. Health care is expensive. Insurance is expensive. Housing is expensive. Groceries are expensive. Raising a family is expensive.
Republicans should own this issue. Lower taxes. Cheaper energy. Fewer unnecessary regulations. More competition. More domestic production. Greater price transparency. These are not complicated ideas. They are practical ways to make a paycheck stretch further.
But Republicans also need to recognize policies that move in the opposite direction, even when those policies come wrapped in populist rhetoric.
Tennessee offers a cautionary example.
This year, lawmakers passed legislation targeting vertical integration in health care. The law effectively forces companies that operate both pharmacy benefit businesses and pharmacies to separate those operations in Tennessee.
Supporters call that competition. But forcing businesses apart by government decree is not competition. And Republicans should be particularly skeptical when government decides that businesses have become too integrated and orders them to restructure.
Vertical integration can produce real efficiencies. A company handling multiple stages of delivering a product or service can eliminate duplicative overhead, coordinate operations and negotiate at scale. Those efficiencies matter because somebody ultimately pays for inefficiency, and it is usually the consumer.
Even Tennessee’s own fiscal analysis acknowledged that its legislation could eliminate efficiencies associated with vertically integrated arrangements and create additional administrative costs for the state.
That should concern Republicans.
The principle extends far beyond pharmacies.
A manufacturer that controls more of its supply chain can reduce transportation and contracting costs. A retailer with an integrated distribution network can move products more efficiently. A health care company coordinating insurance, pharmacy benefits and pharmacy services may be able to eliminate administrative duplication.
Vertical integration is not automatically good, just as corporate consolidation is not automatically bad. Anticompetitive behavior should be investigated and punished. Consumers deserve transparency and genuine choices.
But there is an enormous difference between policing misconduct and government deciding how a private company is allowed to organize itself.
Republicans should favor the former and be suspicious of the latter.
An affordability agenda should begin with a simple test: Does this policy make it easier or harder to produce and deliver something Americans need?
Make it easier to build homes. Expand domestic energy. Reduce regulations that unnecessarily increase the cost of hiring workers. Encourage competition in health care. Make prices transparent. Let businesses find efficiencies that allow them to offer consumers better products at lower prices.
And when government proposes eliminating an efficient business model, policymakers should demand compelling evidence that consumers will benefit.
Republicans cannot criticize Washington for increasing costs on Monday and endorse state-level mandates that could do the same thing on Tuesday.
The affordability debate is about more than the next election. It is about whether Republicans still believe economic freedom is one of the best tools we have for improving Americans’ standard of living.
Voters are asking a straightforward question: What are you going to do to make my life more affordable?
Republicans need an equally straightforward answer. Get government out of the way of the people trying to make things cheaper.