Polls indicate that there is a very real chance Donald Trump will be our next president.
There are millions of (mostly white) working class people voting for him, and I am reasonably sure that somewhere between half and 3/4 of those voters have either gained access to healthcare themselves since the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) was passed, or have friends or family members who have gained access to healthcare since the ACA was passed.
The ACA makes it illegal for insurance companies to deny funding to customers based on pre-existing conditions or to cut off funding whenever they think it stops being cost-effective.
GOP propaganda about the ACA included a lot of nonsense about “death panels” and how Obama was going to pull the plug on your grandma and all sorts of crazy stuff. In reality – a place many Americans do not spend very much of their mental lives, unfortunately – insurance companies already had “death panels” cutting people off from funding, prematurely ending vital treatment and often prematurely ending the lives of insurance customers who had been paying monthly premiums for decades.
The ACA did not create “death panels,” the ACA banned them.
Donald Trump plans to repeal the ACA as soon as he is in office. Many Trump voters will lose access to health care and die if this happens. This is simply a fact.
Here’s the thing: if that happens – and I really hope it doesn’t, but if Trump is elected it will – people like Hillary Clinton, people like Bernie Sanders, these people will continue to fight – as they have for decades – to help Americans get access to the healthcare they need.
And while I will support them in this endeavor in any way I can, I would like to offer a word to the wise:
If Trump gets elected, and you voted for him (or for that matter if you voted for Johnson or Stein; neither of them have any actual chance of winning, and news flash, geniuses, the Libertarian party is just as ideologically opposed to the ACA as the GOP), and you or someone you know loses their health coverage…
Well first off, you’d have my sympathies.
And second, if this unfortunate eventuality occurs, and you choose to lay blame for the fact that you or someone you know can’t get healthcare at the feet of President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or the Democrats in general…
You’d better fucking not do so within earshot (or eyeshot) of me.
Have a great day! If Trump gets elected, we Americans may not have very many great days left.
Sincerely,
Michael Nathan Walker