Look 20 years out
The Senate bill to replace the Affordable Care Act is much worse than even the Congressional Budget Office found, because the CBO looked only at the first 10 years. During the next 10 years, the elderly and disabled lose 25 percent more, children lose 30 percent more, adults on Medicaid almost 40 percent, and working class people who relied on the Medicaid expansion lose over half of what they had before. The 1965 Medicaid program is gutted.
But isn’t that what the super conservative wing of the Republicans have always wanted? The complete dismantling of any vestige of the welfare state and complete Market Rules capitalism. You know, fuck the poor and those with less power than you. Of course not all the republicans in Congress and the Senate are that extreme, but to avoid being shived by their hard core activists they are prepared to play along. I guess they figure that they and their kids will be ok…
+Rob “I guess they figure that they and their kids will be ok…”
It still baffles me that supposedly economic savvy people like the super rich (even a lot of self-made ones) insist on thinking that it could possibly be good for them if there’s nobody left to buy the stuff they’re selling.
Ah but you see there’s the Miraculous Wonder of DEBT to rescue them. People will buy the stuff they’re selling thanks to the miracle of credit card debt, and another bonus of that is that people with massive debt are trapped in their jobs instead of being free to quit if their boss sucks.
Rob,
The end of the process probably won’t be market rules capitalism because the middle class will be impoverished, but a return to feudalism on the Latin American model. The rich will prosper.
Members of the middle class are always easy marks for conservative low tax, small government propaganda, even though they have proportionally, the most to lose.
Let’s be optimistic, surely America’s institutions will prevent it from following that scenario.