This thread is very informative. Let's not spoil it with group A vs group B nonsense. You can't paint every R, D or I with the same brush...
OK, I'm off my soapbox.
Dude, have you even read this thread? That's what the whole thing is about. ;)
I don't even get what he is talking about!
Snark alertSomething like, "All generalizations are bad." Or maybe, "All Independent voters are exactly alike!"
Let me expand a bit on my question above, as I'm not interested in tribalism or generalization here either, but trying to understand the actual rationale. I know it may be naive to try to understand the POV and argument that leads someone to a different opinion than my own, it's just a bad habit of mine I can't seem to kick.
So without Medicare, ACA, Medicaid, CHIP, etc., some taxes would go away, leaving more money in people's pockets. That's the argument, right?
Those tax dollars that used to go to pay doctors and nurses and pharmaceutical companies and medical suppliers, now goes where? I supposed "job creation" is the answer here. Will those jobs be in health care? Probably not, as demand from the most reliably sick part of our population (the elderly) just dried up, so the market will just wave goodbye with its invisible hand. Those folks aren't likely to be abled-bodied enough to get jobs that might provide healthcare -- and they're probably a bit peeved that the system they paid into for their entire working lives just abandoned them. But they'll be dead sooner now, since they don't get healthcare, so we can ignore them.
Now the healthcare industry as a whole has shrunk, and there are a bunch of out-of-work doctors who can't pay their student loans anymore, and can't afford to buy health insurance either -- but at least they can health themselves.
Poor and disabled folks (and their kids) are supposed to grabbing at bootstraps at this point, right? Folks who were not able to find work prior to this change will somehow be able to do so now that they
don't have access to healthcare?
So at the end of the day, we would abolish a working (but imperfect) system in order to make lots of people worse off, so that other people would have a marginal benefit? Why? Am I misunderstanding how it would be expected to play out?
This is where I always end up between the horns of the dilemma: Either the proponents of these types of policies are dumb or dishonest. Though I guess it could be both.