This isn't exactly election related, since it pertains mostly to the current administration, but I think it's worth pointing out.
The Affordable Care Act is still the central battleground of the Republican Congress and Obama's exiting administration, and I'm sure whoever gets elected next will still be dealing with it. Senator John Thune (SD) has been a stalwart and frequently baffling opponent since the day one, and yesterday reached a new level of baffling criticism. Maybe, I've been out of the loop long enough that I don't know where the level is anymore. He
tweeted this:
Six million people risk losing their health care subsidies, yet @POTUS continues to deny that Obamacare is bad for the American people.
"Risk losing their health care subsidies" is what happens if the ACA is repealed, since that's what's giving them those subsidies. And repealing the ACA is what Thune wants to do. If you're thinking, doesn't that mean Thune is saying the ACA is bad because people will lose health care coverage when Thune gets what he wants by removing it, then you're right on track. It's logic so circular it threatens to collapse into a singularity of dumb. In a refreshing breath of air, fellow anti-ACA Republican Congressman Justin Amash (MI) said
that makes no damn sense (marking himself for defeat by a "true conservative" in his upcoming primary election).
This would be just another "Old Man Yells At Cloud" type story, except it fits a well established pattern over the last five years. A significant portion of American politicians have decided they can pick and choose what reality they want to live in, and by campaigning from that universe force the real world to move with them. Polling a
couple months ago found significant (although minority-sized) groups of people still believe the ACA authorizes the government to force you to die while in hospice care, covers illegal immigrants, raised income taxes and did not cut business taxes.
For the most part, these dopey one-off things break down in polling exactly along party affiliation, making them pretty meaningless, but the significant one (a ways down the page) is what the program cost to implement. The administration sold the ACA on the idea that it would lower federal health care spending long term, but never pretended that it wouldn't cost something to implement. Exactly what, nobody ever really had a straight answer for. Mostly because of the constantly changing metrics and long-delayed effort to defend the program, over 80% of Americans when asked either believe the ACA has cost the government more money than expected, or simply don't have an answer. The reality is, the ACA's implementation costs have actually been considerably less than expected, and the Congressional Budget Office is now predicting the next decade of federal health care spending
will be even less than they predicted in 2010. Worth pointing out that some of those lowered costs were due to implementations being delayed, but $611 billion over ten years is not exactly a small number.
Obamacare hasn't really been an election issue so far. Hillary Clinton expects it to continue to be business as usual if she's elected, and every Republican running has repeatedly sworn to repeal it the day they enter office. But I bet it'll get more attention closer to the election, especially as more of it's programs come online and all the lawsuits get resolved. And it does not bode well for how voters will be thinking, given that a vast majority of people across both parties just plain don't know or don't believe the reality of the largest domestic action of the outgoing Presidency.
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Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1585558 times)