4 ms·

I don't understand how this confers political benefit to the republicans or the white house. Can somebody explain a non conspiracy model how this helps them ele

by ggm 11mo ago

I don't understand how this confers political benefit to the republicans or the white house. Can somebody explain a non conspiracy model how this helps them electorally running into the midterms? Is there some way aside from the obvious mistruths they can demonstrate its the democrats fault, and achieve some electoral advantage? Wyoming is extremely "red" according to Web searches (I am not an american) My default assumption here is, it cannot, and this is going to cost them seats.

undeveloper 11mo ago
All indications show that this is absolutely terrible for republicans' self interest, and popularity. trump has gone from winning the popular vote ~~(over 50% voted for him)~~ (a plurality of 49.8% voted for him) to polling at the 30%s. The recent 2025 elections (an off-year, so a variety of smaller elections at the state / city level mostly) have shown democrats are absolutely performing much better right now. This is not contested by either party. > Is there some way aside from the obvious mistruths they can demonstrate its the democrats fault, and achieve some electoral advantage? You discount the skill republicans have at lying -- regardless, when people are feeling the pinch in their pockets, they will blame whoever is in power. Currently it is the republicans.
- sundaeofshock 11mo ago
  <<trump has gone from winning the popular vote (over 50% voted for him)>> Trump received 49.8% of the popular vote.
  - undeveloper 11mo ago
    You are right there. a plurality, then.
- kcplate 11mo ago
  I think you probably need to consider how many and who is affected and where their voting affiliations already lie if they even vote at all. My guess is this doesn’t help or hurt either party at the voting booth. If you are ACA aligned or participate in that program you probably already vote Dem or not at all.
  - RickJWagner 11mo ago
    Not me. I’m right leaning, but use ACA in pre-Medicare retirement. I suspect a lot of FIRE people ( being excellent money managers / penny pinchers ) are in this boat.
    - TimorousBestie 11mo ago
      I don’t get it. Is there some other wedge issue keeping you conservative? Us FIRE types depend on stable, consistent markets and positive (real) interest rates, and conservatives haven’t delivered on that in recent memory.
      - RickJWagner 11mo ago
        Might be some confirmation bias at work in one or both of us. I tend to see conservative people in the FIRE space, seems you see the opposite. I’ll look more closely to get a better feel.
    - kcplate 11mo ago
      Ok, sure… but my guess is that ACA costs aren’t your only political decision maker if you are financially independent. Other things, like market performance under one party over the other probably hold a greater weight on your political considerations. A person in that circumstance generally doesn’t vote with their wallet, they are voting with their portfolio. But if you are younger, perhaps with a chronic condition, in a job that doesn’t provide a health insurance benefit, and with minimal 401k…you are weighting ACA costs…and are in a demographic that historically votes more blue.
      - fragmede 11mo ago
        If you want to bring up market performance, then we gotta talk about tariffs, and AI, and I was just with the family at Thanksgiving, alright?
        kcplate 11mo ago
- RickJWagner 11mo ago
  Meh. Trump is ahead of Obama and Bush, given the same point in the presidency. The honeymoon is over, but he has not become excessively unpopular.
KPGv2 11mo ago
they've reached a local maximum and the only simulated annealing in their party (Trump) doesn't care about this issue at all.
fluidcruft 11mo ago
Extremely red states don't care. They won't flip at all. And none of the districts are even remotely competitive. Only the primaries matter. A cursory look says Wyoming has a population of ~580k and ~340k registered voters. The article says Wyoming has 46k people on ACA. Republicans win landslides in Wyoming (40%-50% margins) and 46k people is 12% of voters max (likely closer to ~4% at risk).
- ggm 11mo ago
  Thanks. So, the upside is saving money, at the expense of alienating poorer voters in (this example) a state where their majority is so big they don't care.
  - fluidcruft 11mo ago
    The "upside" is national-level PAC money financing your campaign.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  - TimorousBestie 11mo ago
    It won’t even save money in the long run. When people don’t have access reliable healthcare, they tend to use even more expensive (for society) options like emergency rooms and grey/black market. People who become disabled or die from lack of healthcare don’t tend to pay much in the way of taxes.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - OutOfHere 11mo ago
      To my knowledge, legal protections against unpaid emergency room bills not leading to credit harm or debt collection exist only in California and New York. Also, emergency rooms are very limited in the care they dispense - they don't dispense chemotherapies.
RickJWagner 11mo ago
I’m right-leaning, I agree it does not help Republicans. Also, propping up ACA ( I say this as an ACA user ) is not the answer, either. The subsidies were temporary, making them permanent only adds to the never ending flood of red ink. Healthcare needs a complete reboot. As someone on the right, I am open to a reasonable big government solution. ( After all, even Nixon wanted public healthcare. ). It’s long past the time for patching. We need a reboot.
- jmclnx 11mo ago
  Yes, a "reboot" is needed. A bit of history from what I remember: Nixon's plan would have passed except for Ted Kennedy, he stopped it in its tracks. Then when the Clintons came in something flipped, the GOP was all against what Hillary was trying to push. I forgot what it was but I think it was some kind of single payer. So under Obama, the democrats took the Massachusetts plan created by Romney (GOP), which I believe the Heritage Foundation even endorsed, thus created the ACA. So here we are. Now I think we are in a sad place where for-profit healthcare is entrenched, bribing both side of the aisle to keep their profits high.
  - dragonwriter 11mo ago
    > I forgot what it was but I think it was some kind of single payer. It was not, despite universal single payer having, at the time, outright majority support in polling. That’s one reason it lacked popular support on either side of the political spectrum. > So under Obama, the democrats took the Massachusetts plan created by Romney (GOP), which I believe the Heritage Foundation even endorsed, thus created the ACA. IIRC, it wasn't created by Romney, it was created by the insurance lobby and became a (rhetorical) Republican alternative during the debate over the Clinton plan; once that was killed, the Republicans didn't push it nationally (though I think Bush briefly, maybe only during the campaign, pushed a similar mandate-and-subsidy plan that was restricted to only including High-Deductible plans tied to HSAs.)
- _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
  AKA the typical doomer non-solution. 'If we blow it up, somehow a new, better systems will magically emerge'. If I went to management with the dev plan of 'throw all the source away, start over with a new stack, new devs, from scratch, but also I don't know what the new stack will be, and haven't found new devs' I would be called a moron. But if you are a conservative, it's somehow called rational policy and a plan and it's worth the lifetime lasting damage/potential deaths is will cause a shit ton of people and financial ruin it will cause many. Edit: Throttled so replying by edit. In the example below, Steve Jobs LITERALLY had a stack in mind, a plan, and people/talent lined up.
danaris 11mo ago
It's not about politics; it's about ideology. They want poor(er) people to hurt, so that rich people can have more. It really is as simple as that.
- qcnguy 11mo ago
  It's not about ideology, ffs get a grip. The US is bleeding out because its government spends so much more than its society can generate via taxes. Its has a debt of 38 trillion dollars. The subsidies were adding to that. People who say "we'd like to give you free money but can't afford it" aren't motivated by ideology, they're motivated by the money not being there. Borrowing just delays the inevitable and makes it worse - it's literally stealing from children and it doesn't fix anything. There are ways to fix US healthcare but adding ever more debt won't do it.
  - danaris 11mo ago
    Whether or not that's true economically, the idea that what Trump is doing will affect that in any positive way is, at this point, not merely ludicrous, but actively in denial of reality. He is blatantly cutting spending on the many in order to give more to the wealthy few. Especially himself.
- gruez 11mo ago
  >They want poor(er) people to hurt, so that rich people can have more. It really is as simple as that. What about rest of Trump's policies? Are tariffs also a "so that rich people can have more" policy, contrary to the "globalization only benefit the rich" rhetoric of the 2000s?
  - danaris 11mo ago
    No: they're based on a specific set of lies he was sold back in the 1980s. There's a particular guy (I'm afraid I don't recall his name) who has been banging the tariff drum and claiming that they're some kind of economic panacea, and he apparently caught Trump at a very pliant time. (I've tried to find who it was again, but it's hard to search for simply "who convinced Trump that tariffs are a good idea?")
_DeadFred_ 11mo ago
From what I'm seeing it's 'Obama and his government intervention broke healthcare, we need the government out so that the system can fix itself'.
- maxerickson 11mo ago
  It hasn't been Obamacare at least since the repeal of the individual mandate.

by ggm 11mo ago

undeveloper 11mo ago

All indications show that this is absolutely terrible for republicans' self interest, and popularity. trump has gone from winning the popular vote ~~(over 50% voted for him)~~ (a plurality of 49.8% voted for him) to polling at the 30%s. The recent 2025 elections (an off-year, so a variety of smaller elections at the state / city level mostly) have shown democrats are absolutely performing much better right now. This is not contested by either party. > Is there some way aside from the obvious mistruths they can demonstrate its the democrats fault, and achieve some electoral advantage? You discount the skill republicans have at lying -- regardless, when people are feeling the pinch in their pockets, they will blame whoever is in power. Currently it is the republicans.

sundaeofshock 11mo ago
<<trump has gone from winning the popular vote (over 50% voted for him)>> Trump received 49.8% of the popular vote.
- undeveloper 11mo ago
  You are right there. a plurality, then.
kcplate 11mo ago
I think you probably need to consider how many and who is affected and where their voting affiliations already lie if they even vote at all. My guess is this doesn’t help or hurt either party at the voting booth. If you are ACA aligned or participate in that program you probably already vote Dem or not at all.
- RickJWagner 11mo ago
  Not me. I’m right leaning, but use ACA in pre-Medicare retirement. I suspect a lot of FIRE people ( being excellent money managers / penny pinchers ) are in this boat.
  - TimorousBestie 11mo ago
    I don’t get it. Is there some other wedge issue keeping you conservative? Us FIRE types depend on stable, consistent markets and positive (real) interest rates, and conservatives haven’t delivered on that in recent memory.
    - RickJWagner 11mo ago
      Might be some confirmation bias at work in one or both of us. I tend to see conservative people in the FIRE space, seems you see the opposite. I’ll look more closely to get a better feel.
  - kcplate 11mo ago
    Ok, sure… but my guess is that ACA costs aren’t your only political decision maker if you are financially independent. Other things, like market performance under one party over the other probably hold a greater weight on your political considerations. A person in that circumstance generally doesn’t vote with their wallet, they are voting with their portfolio. But if you are younger, perhaps with a chronic condition, in a job that doesn’t provide a health insurance benefit, and with minimal 401k…you are weighting ACA costs…and are in a demographic that historically votes more blue.
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      If you want to bring up market performance, then we gotta talk about tariffs, and AI, and I was just with the family at Thanksgiving, alright?
      - kcplate 11mo ago
RickJWagner 11mo ago
Meh. Trump is ahead of Obama and Bush, given the same point in the presidency. The honeymoon is over, but he has not become excessively unpopular.

KPGv2 11mo ago

they've reached a local maximum and the only simulated annealing in their party (Trump) doesn't care about this issue at all.

fluidcruft 11mo ago

Extremely red states don't care. They won't flip at all. And none of the districts are even remotely competitive. Only the primaries matter. A cursory look says Wyoming has a population of ~580k and ~340k registered voters. The article says Wyoming has 46k people on ACA. Republicans win landslides in Wyoming (40%-50% margins) and 46k people is 12% of voters max (likely closer to ~4% at risk).

ggm 11mo ago
Thanks. So, the upside is saving money, at the expense of alienating poorer voters in (this example) a state where their majority is so big they don't care.
- fluidcruft 11mo ago
  The "upside" is national-level PAC money financing your campaign.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- TimorousBestie 11mo ago
  It won’t even save money in the long run. When people don’t have access reliable healthcare, they tend to use even more expensive (for society) options like emergency rooms and grey/black market. People who become disabled or die from lack of healthcare don’t tend to pay much in the way of taxes.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - OutOfHere 11mo ago
    To my knowledge, legal protections against unpaid emergency room bills not leading to credit harm or debt collection exist only in California and New York. Also, emergency rooms are very limited in the care they dispense - they don't dispense chemotherapies.

RickJWagner 11mo ago

I’m right-leaning, I agree it does not help Republicans. Also, propping up ACA ( I say this as an ACA user ) is not the answer, either. The subsidies were temporary, making them permanent only adds to the never ending flood of red ink. Healthcare needs a complete reboot. As someone on the right, I am open to a reasonable big government solution. ( After all, even Nixon wanted public healthcare. ). It’s long past the time for patching. We need a reboot.

jmclnx 11mo ago
Yes, a "reboot" is needed. A bit of history from what I remember: Nixon's plan would have passed except for Ted Kennedy, he stopped it in its tracks. Then when the Clintons came in something flipped, the GOP was all against what Hillary was trying to push. I forgot what it was but I think it was some kind of single payer. So under Obama, the democrats took the Massachusetts plan created by Romney (GOP), which I believe the Heritage Foundation even endorsed, thus created the ACA. So here we are. Now I think we are in a sad place where for-profit healthcare is entrenched, bribing both side of the aisle to keep their profits high.
- dragonwriter 11mo ago
  > I forgot what it was but I think it was some kind of single payer. It was not, despite universal single payer having, at the time, outright majority support in polling. That’s one reason it lacked popular support on either side of the political spectrum. > So under Obama, the democrats took the Massachusetts plan created by Romney (GOP), which I believe the Heritage Foundation even endorsed, thus created the ACA. IIRC, it wasn't created by Romney, it was created by the insurance lobby and became a (rhetorical) Republican alternative during the debate over the Clinton plan; once that was killed, the Republicans didn't push it nationally (though I think Bush briefly, maybe only during the campaign, pushed a similar mandate-and-subsidy plan that was restricted to only including High-Deductible plans tied to HSAs.)
_DeadFred_ 11mo ago
AKA the typical doomer non-solution. 'If we blow it up, somehow a new, better systems will magically emerge'. If I went to management with the dev plan of 'throw all the source away, start over with a new stack, new devs, from scratch, but also I don't know what the new stack will be, and haven't found new devs' I would be called a moron. But if you are a conservative, it's somehow called rational policy and a plan and it's worth the lifetime lasting damage/potential deaths is will cause a shit ton of people and financial ruin it will cause many. Edit: Throttled so replying by edit. In the example below, Steve Jobs LITERALLY had a stack in mind, a plan, and people/talent lined up.

danaris 11mo ago

It's not about politics; it's about ideology. They want poor(er) people to hurt, so that rich people can have more. It really is as simple as that.

qcnguy 11mo ago
It's not about ideology, ffs get a grip. The US is bleeding out because its government spends so much more than its society can generate via taxes. Its has a debt of 38 trillion dollars. The subsidies were adding to that. People who say "we'd like to give you free money but can't afford it" aren't motivated by ideology, they're motivated by the money not being there. Borrowing just delays the inevitable and makes it worse - it's literally stealing from children and it doesn't fix anything. There are ways to fix US healthcare but adding ever more debt won't do it.
- danaris 11mo ago
  Whether or not that's true economically, the idea that what Trump is doing will affect that in any positive way is, at this point, not merely ludicrous, but actively in denial of reality. He is blatantly cutting spending on the many in order to give more to the wealthy few. Especially himself.
gruez 11mo ago
>They want poor(er) people to hurt, so that rich people can have more. It really is as simple as that. What about rest of Trump's policies? Are tariffs also a "so that rich people can have more" policy, contrary to the "globalization only benefit the rich" rhetoric of the 2000s?
- danaris 11mo ago
  No: they're based on a specific set of lies he was sold back in the 1980s. There's a particular guy (I'm afraid I don't recall his name) who has been banging the tariff drum and claiming that they're some kind of economic panacea, and he apparently caught Trump at a very pliant time. (I've tried to find who it was again, but it's hard to search for simply "who convinced Trump that tariffs are a good idea?")

_DeadFred_ 11mo ago

From what I'm seeing it's 'Obama and his government intervention broke healthcare, we need the government out so that the system can fix itself'.

maxerickson 11mo ago
It hasn't been Obamacare at least since the repeal of the individual mandate.