[Spivak]

Yeah, this is ultimately why I don't love the idea of single payer. But honestly I'm (slowly) warming up to it as the fears of government controlling healthcare in the way you describe are starting to happen anyway. I guess we'll see how bad it gets and how successful government is at sticking their fingers in private healthcare.

[atmavatar]

Private insurance is no better.

Before the ACA, there were dozens of reasons for which you could be deemed uninsurable, not the least of which is that you had a "pre-existing condition" (i.e., you were unlikely to be profitable enough). North of 15% of the US population lacked health insurance as a result. Even after ACA's passage, we straddle 10% uninsured, rising above some years and falling below in others.

When we have regular, required medication like insulin costing tens or hundreds of times more here than anywhere else on the planet, being uninsured can be a particularly cruel, slow death sentence.

Still, the joke's on GP: he/she still is relying on Trump not to take away healthcare and housing from people he doesn't like (re: poor people, i.e., nearly everyone). The BBB guts medicaid and ACA subsidies, which will ultimately remove health insurance from millions either directly or pricing it out of reach, and his combination of tariffs and deportations of (often times not-so-)illegal immigrants make building more housing difficult and significantly more expensive.

Expect even harsher austerity measures and/or batshit insane policies the next time the Republican party wants to shake the tax cut for billionaires tree or perhaps even just for shits and giggles since many of the cruel policies are there to put the rabble in their place.

[thankyoufriend]

It's crazy to me that many of the people who are so proud to be American don't seem to realize that they are actually at odds with the spirit of America. They latch onto superficial anti-gubbermint thinking while surrendering their rights to billionaires. Being an American is supposed to be about telling powerful people to go fuck themselves, standing up for inclusive equality and reckoning with our slights against what we claim to believe. It's supposed to be about modeling democratic ideals to show the world there's a better way. It's supposed to be about being so morally righteous that others come to their own conclusion that we're worthy of emulation, and not because we regime changed them. Somehow we let all of that get away from us.