My take exactly. The thing is, in virtually all single payer-type countries, private health insurance still plays a role. It just doesn’t play a primary role. I have no problem with health insurance companies doing the same thing here in the USA, but they and all those getting rich on the backs of sick Americans will put up a hell of a fight to keep their superior status. Open enrollment for the ACA will become an issue in the run-up to November, and there are opportunities for Corporate Health Care to gin up a lot of resentment against the ACA – against Democrats in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular.
The only thing that gives me a modicum of hope is that Trump hasn’t intelligibly articulated any alternative (what Republican has?) but has indicated he believes in a “health care for all” approach – which may scare Corporate Health Care more than a Clinton presidency. Better the devil you know…
Most who hate the ACA don’t understand it at all. They view it as public welfare and have little interest in examining the facts of corporate profits in health care – which are jaw-droppingly substantial since the enactment of the ACA. Facts just don’t seem to matter in this election. If Trump can successfully tap into the resentment many have against the ACA at a crucial moment, it may tip the scales. A remote possibility, but still a possibility… and any possibility horrifies me.
One of the major issues I have with Trump is that he’s so all over the place, so you have no idea what you will really get if he’s elected. He could somehow end up fine (least likely scenario). Or he’ll be a complete and utter mess and offend every one of our allies among other things. Or nearly as bad, he would consider himself a figurehead or chairman of the board kind of thing and let others (probably from the far right) run things, which would be similar to Bush letting Cheney do things, but much, much worse
At this point we might want to ask if we’re sure that Gary Johnson won’t be the next President. It really would cap off an insane election campaign if in the end the drama in the Dem and Rep races didn’t even matter.
I wouldn’t hold your breath, even in this crazy election cycle. The majority (66%) of the electorate has never even heard of Johnson. Cite.
Johnson is currently polling at 8%. In the months leading up to the 2012 election, he was polling at around 5% in a match-up with Obama and Romney, ultimately getting less than 1% of the vote. Cite.
With apologies to the late President Ford, can our long national nightmare be over?
The last few days have seemed to be a perfect storm of bad news for Trump. Hopefully Clinton will double down on what finally seems to be an effective line of attack against him (something that eluded all of the other Republican candidates in the primary). Plus, the news media seem to finally be pivoting from news coverage that basically consisted of, “Can you believe what Trump just said?” to actually conducting some of the in-depth investigative journalism that a “normal” candidate would have been subjected to long before now. Finally, Trump is proving himself to be his own worst enemy as he doubles down on his racist attacks on a federal judge, and now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee, the lunatic ramblings coming out of his mouth can no longer be dismissed as “Donald being Donald.” :rolleyes:
I actually feel much better about the prospects of Trump going down in ignominious defeat than I have in months. I wonder if this past week will later be seen as a tipping point. One can only hope.
I’ve never been a Sanders fan to begin with, but Bernie is now acting like a whiny git. I wish he’d just get over it and let Hillary get on with the crucial business of quashing Trump.
Sander’s behavior in no way prevents Hillary from doing anything she wants to.
For a while I thought there was a good chance the election could go either way but
Trump is just too crazy–look at his attacks on the judge whose parents were Mexican
The majority of his policies are the extreme right-wing policies of the Republicans (like anti climate change, tax cuts for the rich, cutting safety net programs) so won’t attract moderates. This is a change from his pre-Presidential campaign where he seemed more moderate.