Quote from Kaon;1253195:
He's already had a hard time. The republican stance on anything he tries to do has been 'no' regardless of what it is since he got into office, simply to prevent him from getting anything done.
But yeah I haven't been following things enough otherwise to really say what caused this shift.
Tho, what was the lie in regards to obamacare? Personally I'd be pretty fucked right now if that hadn't gone through.
Yeah, the constant impasse was rather frustrating to watch. They've been able to say 'no' a lot because the people gave Republicans the control of the house after the Democrats, who controlled all 3 levels of government at the time, failed to meet their expectations. The only interesting thing that came from it was the automatic budget sequestration.
As for the lies made to pass Obamacare, there were many. The key one being that it would reduce healthcare costs. The average family's healthcare insurance costs were supposed to go down by around $2,500/yr. Instead, they have gone up by 49% on average so far. The CBO calculated the additional costs of Obamacare (health insurance subsidies, Medicaid expansion, administrative costs, etc.) to be around $2 trillion for the next 10 years, or about $2000 per household.
I was really supportive of the reform at the time--I didn't think the promise was crazy, given that the US spends
way more on healthcare costs--not only when it comes to people spending money on health insurance, but also in terms of tax dollars being spent per capita
in addition to what people spend on private insurance already. This doesn't really make any sense, but it's the reality. Therefore, I figured it wouldn't be crazy to assume that there should be a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick to improve costs, but that didn't turn out to be the case; the government threw more money at the problem, instead. It kind of explains how health insurers were originally really opposed to reforms but then suddenly came onboard... makes you wonder what changes were made to the reforms to get them to buy in.
Oh wait, nobody really knew that at the time, because...
[video=youtube;KoE1R-xH5To]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To[/video]
...yeah, this is a great way to pass reform. lol
I could go on and on, but I don't have the time to go back and research all the screwups to give all the examples, etc.
Quote from Campylobacter jejuni;1253201:
Seems to be the gross misrepresentation of facts as we already know it from Republicans, if that's what you're referring to.
Things aren't going forward anywhere with Republicans in a position of power.
Sorry, but your left-leaning opinion piece there is not presenting the problem correctly; the idea was that if you liked your current plan, you didn't have to worry about Obamacare taking it away, period. Grandfathering is bullshit and further restrictions to what allowed plans to be grandfathered were put in later. Healthy people preferred buying cheap insurance for catastrophic coverage only, because it's all they needed. They can no longer do so, because the government (as part of the deal with the insurance companies) forces healthy people to buy more expensive plans to offset the cost of the unhealthy people paying for cheaper plans than they used to.
Practical and fair? Meh. What people were promised? Nope.
Quote from Iljimae;1253212:
>Rick Scott wins Florida again
>Florida doesn't pass prop 2 to legalize medical marijuana (57% to the 60% needed)
Always a never ending source of disappointment here in the sunshine state. We could have had a high speed rail system, but Rick Scott gave the finger to the 2 billion federal "Obama" funds, which would have nearly covered the entire project, and screwed us over.
Luckily those funds got reallocated to California for their high speed rail system, since other states were fighting tooth and nail for the opportunity as one of the many backbones to a healthy economy is effective transportation.
Elsewhere in the country the election shows people want the right to abortion, the right to recreational or medical marijuana (we should have learned from the first prohibition by now), social welfare, and higher minimum wage, but GOP representation.
Class confusion at its best this election.
I remember the high speed rail thing... it pissed me off. :| What a wasted opportunity. Infrastructure investments should be one of the main things on which public money is spent; I don't see how this can even be controversial. So long as there is a good business case, of course, but politics should be kept out of that.
As for people not voting for the "right party" to get what they want, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. In a way, it shows that there is room for some bipartisanship, which is something the US really needs.
An interesting case is the heavily conservative Utah, where they decided to tackle homelessness by giving people homes. The Republicans simply calculated that it would be cheaper to give them homes than to pay for the ER visits, jail and other costs, per person. The fact that nobody had to fear political backlash for proposing such a thing helped get it done.