I’m actually inclined to agree that on the national level, gun control is a losing issue and will remain so for at least another generation. It’s just taken an oddly long time for Democrats to clue into this, whereas I expect most Republicans will be happy to abandon all opposition to gay marriage (even though their earlier opposition was, like 100 billion percent serious, you guys!) the second it seems more trouble than it’s worth.
I think that’s because Democrats never really give up on issues, they just make a strategic retreat, whereas when Republicans decide an issue isn’t worth the trouble anymore they just make the switch.
Yeah, that’s why they gave up on abortion after the Roe v. Wade decision.
adaher didn’t say they gave up when the court decisions came down, he said “when Republicans decide an issue isn’t worth the trouble anymore they just make the switch”. (Underscore mine)
When they decide it isn’t worth the trouble. Opposition to abortion is still a huge draw for them, why would they drop it?
Not sure what you’re referring to here. Why would Republicans give up on abortion when the country is almost evenly divided on the issue?
Cool story, but Gore received over a half million more votes than Bush, and in fact received the second most votes in American history at that point (the most being Reagan in '84).
This is an interesting article about what they are planning:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/10/gop_congress_begins_crafting_agenda_for_president_trump_132314.html
If the primary goal is just to scupper Barack Obama’s Presidency, then that’s a good way of doing it. Republicans can render Obama’s eight years pretty much meaningless by undoing his executive orders across the board and repealing ACA. And some of what Obama did should be overturned, including ACA, but only if they have an actual replacement that reduces the uninsured rate almost as well as ACA did.
I’m a Ryan fan and I loathe McConnell, but doggoneit, McConnell is 100% right. The GOP does NOT have an electoral mandate, not even close, and even if you do, boldness may be justified, but not speed. That’s where the Democrats went wrong from 2009-2010. If your policy is good, you can let it simmer for a few months, letting the public swish it around in their mouths for awhile so to speak and decide if they like the taste. Since we don’t have an electoral mandate, we have a duty to limit ourselves to what the public can support.
On one level, I understand the allure of moving quickly to repeal ACA. Democrats aren’t going to take another bite at that apple for a long time given what it did to them, so if you repeal it it won’t be coming back for a generation or more. And if the GOP was a party that had built up a great deal of trust with voters then I’d say go for it and take the short term heat.
But we don’t have that trust and going straight to repeal with a bogus or no replacement is a bad way to start off.
I’m confident they will, the day after it becomes clear that it’s costing them more votes and support than it produces. If anything, the Republicans are proving fairly adroit at throwing a huge amount of energy behind an issue and yet - blip! - pretending they never even heard of it a year later.
Their core is lower taxes for the rich. All that other idealistic stuff is just decoration.
Why not just give every family with under, say, $100K in income, and lacking an employer-provided health plan, a combo of a HDHP and a HSA? Make the deductible something like $10K and give people a few hundred bucks a year to stick in their HSA. I wouldn’t know how to run the numbers on this, but I bet it wouldn’t break the bank.
They may go that route, Trump has talked about making HSAs a big part of any replacement, but there has to be some federal money put towards helping people afford insurance or else you just have too many uninsured. And matching funds won’t cut it, you really have to pretty much fully fund these things for poorer Americans.
Yeah, I was saying to completely fund them, with no premiums or anything, for everyone earning under $100K. Plus, the government would contribute say $500 a year to the HSA. But the catch is that the deductible is $10K. So if you get into a car wreck or have a heart attack, but you only have $1500 in your HSA, you will very quickly be $8500 in medical debt. But that’s a manageable amount to pay off eventually, and because everything above that gets covered, the hospital doesn’t have the incentive to kick them out on the street as soon as possible like they would for someone totally uninsured. Their losses on any one patient are maxxed out at $10K, and you could even have the feds recover the unpaid deductible by deducting it from income tax refunds like they do with defaulted student loans.
ETA: From what I’ve seen, the main “benefit” Trump talks about with HSAs is making them tax deductible. Which is useless for people around $30-50K who aren’t paying significant amounts of taxes to begin with.
The other issue is how to pay for it. If the Republicans do like they did with the drug benefit, just pass it and not pay for it then their time in power will be short.
Right. But I’m suggesting this as a complete replacement for Medicaid and ACA. Would it really be that expensive? I mean, I’m being a bad liberal to say so, but my kids are on Medicaid (technically SCHIP, but it’s a Medicaid card that they get), and it actually seems a little wasteful that we pay not even a token premium, not a single dollar for office visits, not a dime for prescriptions. Seems like for each person currently covered by Medicaid/SCHIP this way, you could cover several people with the kind of program I’m suggesting.
Actually, Matt Yglesias, a pretty good liberal himself but one who thinks outside the box, has said many times that rather than having government programs to give people this or that, the government should just give people money. Poor people can decide for themselves how to prioritize food vs. medical care vs. child care vs. moving to find a better job vs. paying for education. Sure, some will make bad decisions but it would probably do more to reduce poverty than “poor people programs” like food stamps and Medicaid.
Yeah, I’ve seen this promulgated before, and a lot of conservatives like it because it gets rid of bureaucrats and social workers. That not only makes the “programs” (if you can call them that) more efficient in how much of the aid gets to people, it takes away a class of professional liberals they don’t like.
I would be okay with some of this, but I think you need to begin with providing a basic floor for something like health care. I just don’t think most low income people are going to salt away enough for this, or bite the bullet and cinch the belt tighter today to pay for a high-deductible health plan just in case they get sick or injured. (This is another of my “bad liberal” characteristics, as I think most poor people make things worse for themselves by being irresponsible with the little money they have. Of course, people with higher incomes are also irresponsible with money, but they can get away with it more easily.)
Remember the Bush years?
That should have been the last chance the republicans got.
It wasn’t.
People have short memories. A very large portion of the electorate is incredibly stupid. There are extensive right-wing propaganda networks in place, making it extremely hard to get through their thick fucking skulls. You’d think that after the clear pattern of Clinton -> Bush -> Obama, people would look at the consistent growth and prosperity under the democrats and the consistent mismanagement under the republicans and just fucking stop voting republican…
…But they didn’t. If the Iraq War, tax cuts for the wealthy, economic meltdown, and more weren’t enough to permanently sink the republican party, I wonder what it will fucking take.
In order for Trump to be the last chance the republicans get, he’d have to cause the kind of world-shaking event that would lead to a complete restructuring of America. The kind of thing that would lead to a massive, massive paradigm shift among the electorate. Something like dismantling the social safety net leading to massive populist uprisings and the overthrow of government, or Trump starting a nuclear war - and even then it wouldn’t surprise me if the FOX headline the next day was, “Donald Trump successfully annihilates enemies of state”. Even if he’s a fucking catastrophic president, even if unemployment immediately rises above 10% and he loses the next election badly, and even if the president after him is a democrat who fixes every stupid mistake he made, it won’t be enough. Why? Because we had exactly that scenario just fucking happen.
Republicans shouldn’t have gotten another chance but Democrats dropped the ball. Sports analogies are used a lot in politics because they are often accurate. The Democrats got the ball, they fumbled early, there was a long scrum, and now the Republicans have it back.
Why should you have to pay anything out of pocket for medical care? Has this system incentivized you to go to the doctor when you don’t think you need to, just for kicks? There’s no need to ration health care; when they are given all they need for free, people still choose to accept less than they should.
No, they have to because access is rationed. No one wants to wait six months for a hip replacement. And in non-emergencies, people definitely take cost into account when deciding to go to the doctor or buy meds. I haven’t bought everything I"ve been prescribed, even with relatively cheap co-pays nor have I sought medical attention for every ailment.
Then there’s the simple fact that most people don’t need help paying for the everyday costs of life. they need help with the unusual situations. I need help if I get cancer, not if I sprain my ankle.