I’m sorry that you find yourself in a worse situation with respect to medical coverage than before the ACA. I can understand why you’d be miffed at it in general.
Are you currently covered by any health plan at all? I assume it’s through work, correct? Besides not being able to keep your doctor, in what specific way are you worse off under your new plan?
FWIW, ACA has allowed me to have health coverage that I would not otherwise have. I’m quite happy because the alternatives would be such that I would likely not be able to afford to see any doctor, much less one I prefer. And I do not receive and kind of ACA subsidy for the plan I currently have. My income is above the threshhold. I pay a pretty high premium because I chose a gold plan (which makes sense for me), and since I registered my rate has gone up by approx. 40%. I’m not thrilled about it but I consider it better than no health insurance at all.
My question to you, is simply this, do you support the current efforts to repeal ACA knowing that many people like me would lose out and be much worse off than perhaps you are because you are not able to see your previous preferred physician?
I’m not trying to make this a gotcha question. I’m just wondering if you can appreciate my position with respect to the ACA.
As to the second point, wouldn’t implementing RomneyCare in every state be essentially what the ACA is, or would be if states couldn’t opt out of the Medicare expansion provision?
You’re probably right. My aim here is not to get people to switch camps but to try to at least see the other point of view IF it is at all possible. What I mean by that is, if the other point of view is based on bigotry, I do not expect anyone to grant that point of view any kind of legitimacy. Some things, as you say, do not lend themselves to common ground or compromise.
But I do think that a better understanding (if not complete agreement) can be reached on things like immigration and healthcare.
of course there are two sides with legitimate points of view (probably more).
but more importantly, i think quicksilver’s call for detente was for among the users of this board. if you think that your fellow dopers points of view are illegitimate why do you stick around?
One question I have for Trump supporters and Republicans in general is this. Do you genuinely believe that the elected Republicans at the federal level are looking out for the White working class? The narrative of the 2016 election seems to be that Trump won based on his appeal to White working class voters in the upper Midwest. As a liberal and a Democrat, I believe that Republicans are mainly interested in helping the rich, which to me explains things like climate change denial, supporting tax cuts for the wealthy, wanting less government regulation etc. I think it’s obvious how these things would benefit the wealthy, but how do they benefit the working class or even the middle class? Am I missing something here, or am I incorrect in my belief that Republicans are all about reverse wealth distribution? These aren’t gotcha questions, I am genuinely curious as to what non-wealthy Republicans make of idea that the the Republican Party is the party of the rich. FWIW, my take on the issue is that Republican politicians have succeeded in playing the identity politics game to the point that working class White people who voted Republican did so against their own best interests. I realize that is an elitist position, but I’d like to know why it’s incorrect.
It is not my goal to normalize, forgive or forget the lies told by Trump, his cabinet and surrogates. I do not wish to legitimize these actions. I’ve been very vocal and critical of Trump in other threads and I make no apologies for making those criticisms in the most derogatory and unequivocal terms. I think they are justified.
That said, I still want to make the attempt to step down the rhetoric to a level where we are not throwing insults and accusations at one another. In this thread, my goal is to hopefully understand the thinking of those Trump supporters who are not bigots, or idiots. I want to make the attempt to understand why they support him despite his very obvious character flaws. Likewise, to try to get them to see why many of us oppose him so vehemently, without making it personally about them.
we have to remember, too, that theres a difference between trump and his administration, and republicans and those who voted for trump. back before the election i asked a middle class mexican american friend of mine why he was supporting trump: “dont you care about all the racist things he’s said against mexicans?” he looked at me as if i just didnt get it: “theyre all racists, why should that affect who i vote for?” i think the white middle class corollary might be “theyre all liars, what should that matter?” i think many people supported trump because they were sick and tired of the status quo, and thought that his administration would shake things up a bit.
now we might think that they were deceived (as i do), but that doesnt make their hopes illegitimate. if we can find out what nearly half the country was hoping to get when they voted, we might find that there is some common ground afterall and we can fight together to hold the new administration accountable to their voter base, and indeed, to the country as a whole!
There were a lot of informative interviews on NPR after the election with people around the country who voted for Trump. Some genuinely bought into his claims that he’d magically bring back manufacturing jobs or create a better, cheaper health insurance for all, some voted because they were disaffected with Hilary/the Democratic Party and so rolled the dice on Trump, some voted because they bought into his populist rhetoric, some voted because they thought he would reduce crime or crack down on minorities, and other reasons.
I want to say a lot of them were on All Things Considered, so I’m not sure if they are archived anywhere.
Just to pick one example, Republicans do not support tax cuts only for the wealthy. In general, they support tax cuts. Since about 47% of the US population don’t pay federal income tax, a federal income tax cut doesn’t benefit them directly, and thus Democrats can say “this is a tax cut for the wealthy” because people who don’t pay taxes don’t benefit from having their taxes cut.
Another factor is that a tax cut is not a transfer of wealth from the poor or middle class to the rich. Taking less money away from person A does not equate to taking more money from B, especially if you are also taking less money from B, or if you aren’t taking any money away from B in the first place.
I suppose I could be considered wealthy by some definitions, but I was a Republican back when I was poor. But even then I could recognize that what Democrats say when they lose elections is not necessarily gospel.
I’ve seen most, if not all, of the arguments that “Republicans only care about the rich”, and frankly, they are BS. Or at least they are as close to BS as the argument that Democrats only care about blacks, transgenders, feminists, and abortion.
Godwin’s law, man. How the fuck can we have an honest, serious debate about the issues when you’re so ready to compare us Trump supporters to damn Nazis, people who were responsible for the genocide of six million Jews?
Oh, there is plenty rationale for us conservatives, as well as Mr. Trump, to dispute the accuracy and authenticity of the CBO report, given how egregiously wrong they have been in the past.
The CBO said that the Affordable Care Act would cut the deficit in its first decade by approximately $119 billion, as well as that in 2017 23 million people would be enrolled in its exchanges.
As we all know, they were seriously wrong on that part.
And as the CBO’s own report points out, the CBO’s current scoring of the GOP healthcare plan is itself constrained by many factors: “the way in which federal agencies, states, insurers, employers, individuals, doctors, hospitals, and other affected parties respond to the changes made by the legislation are all difficult to predict, so the estimates in this report are uncertain.” (http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dont-trust-those-cbo-health-care-numbers/)
Plus, the current GOP healthcare replacement plan, or Trumpcare, whatever you want to call it, is not even the final version; there can still be, and will be, amendments added to it during the Rules Committee process to improve its goal of not leaving Americans in a ditch. I’m assuming the House Freedom Caucus will take point on that particular process to improve the current admittedly ill-advised version.
The main goal of this thread is to try to come to some mutual understanding about the valid concerns that each side has about the policies and rhetoric coming from the other.
So while I appreciate that you don’t want to be associated with a group of people responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity in recorded history, are you at least willing to acknowledge that there are certain similarities in Trump’s rhetoric that is very similar to extreme authoritarian rhetoric of the past? We certainly have no evidence that Trump and his advisers are Nazis. But they have engaged in discredited “alternative facts” and espoused limits on freedom of the press while calling opponents “enemies”. Would you agree or disagree that these are legitimate issues of concern?
People always seem to forget that Trump used the qualifier “fake” when he said the media were the enemy of the American people. He didn’t say the media were the enemy of the people, he said the FAKE NEWS media were the enemy of the American people.
I agree that Kellyanne’s “alternative facts” comment was absurd; she probably meant to say that reasonable people can have an “alternative interpretation of the facts.”
However, up to date, Trump has never blocked any media outlet from appearing in the Daily Press Briefing with Spicer, no matter how negative they were, and we all know how negative CNN was (and still is), and they were allowed.
They may have been blocked from a “press gaggle”, but from what I understand he was working with a rotational press pool and as such there was a limit to how many reporters he could have.
I’m just not comfortable with comparing your opponents to Nazis, not just per Godwin’s law, but because you’re essentially comparing them to people who murdered over six million people.
It’s not clear to me you understand what this thread is about. I’m not asking you to defend Trump and Co. I’m asking people to take a step back and view things from the point of view of the other side. If you can’t or won’t do that, perhaps this isn’t the thread for you. Your call. I’m not here to keep you out, but there are plenty of other threads where you can defend the various Trump policies and statements.
As loathsome as that is, isn’t this thread specifically not about Trump’s actions himself, but instead the interactions with the people that may oppose or support the administration?
I can’t get in the mind of various politicians, but I don’t think the intended purpose of policy should favor any group, the rich, middle, or lower income folks. As I mentioned upthread, I’m in favor of dramatically lower tax rates across the board. Because higher income people tend to be impacted by tax policy, this would incidentally result in a disproportionate benefit towards those folks. The point isn’t reverse wealth distribution, it’s increasing individual liberty. The obvious rejoinder is that the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. I accept that true liberty means that there is an acceptable level of suffering and not all misfortune can be alleviated.
But you’re cherry-picking one aspect of the CBO analysis. CBO estimated how many would be enrolled in exchanges AS ONE PART of an estimate of how many people would gain insurance through the ACA. In the end, CBO projected that 30 million Americans would be uninsured in 2016 with passage of the bill. The bill passed, and 27.9 million Americans were uninsured in 2016.
The Commonwealth Fund, a non-partisan health care analysis thinktank (funded with oil money, by the way) concluded: “Given the likelihood of additional reforms to national health policy in future years, it is reassuring that, despite the many unforeseen factors surrounding the law’s rollout and participation in its reforms, the CBO’s forecast was reasonably accurate.”
So who do you trust more: politicians who are being told something that they don’t like so they attack the messenger, or a non-partisan research institute?
Plus, the other parts of Trumpcare must be passed over an expected filibuster, so saying, “Hold on, more is coming to fix this bill that nobody likes!” isn’t a good bet.
More to the point, it seems indisputable that millions and millions of Americans who have healthcare now stand to lose healthcare under the proposed Republican plan and there is no reason to think this will not affect people on the pro-Trump and the anti-Trump sides equally.
How can that be viewed as a good thing regardless of what side you’re on?
i dont know that its “indisputable that millions and millions of Americans who have healthcare now stand to lose healthcare”, surely many will be left out in the cold, but others will just see a change in options.
by lowering the financial burden on the govt, its seen as a move thats good for the country as a whole, even if its not so good for some. its a pretty standard republican viewpoint.