marc9000 writes:
....but from society coming up short on coming to their rescue when they can't provide their own medical care. They do in every country all over the world.
Most first world countries already provide universal healthcare. The US is an outlier.
I know that, but my point was that even countries with universal healthcare still have problems keeping all their patients happy. Non-U.S. posters here seem slow to go into any detail about long waiting periods for procedures that got taken care of right away here even before Obamacare.
You misunderstand the criticism. The criticism is not that Trump failed to come up with a plan in less than two months. The criticism is that he lied during the campaign when he said he already had a better and cheaper health care plan. Turns out he had no plan and they had to cobble one together at the last minute.
I can't defend everything Trump has said, I think he said that he had a plan where "everyone would be covered and it will be wonderful", or something close to that. That's ridiculous, the entire healthcare situation is far too complicated to solve with one plan and make everyone happy. There's no going back to the 50's and 60's, when the U.S. populace really was content with the way healthcare was. Because the government wasn't involved. There was a time when people recognized the proper role of the U.S. government.
One wonders when the Trump supporters will finally learn that braggadocio is just the way Trump talks.
I realized that before I voted for him. I think it's a very small part of how he'll do his job as president.
Everything he says is better and bigger and more wonderful. It's always a nice fairy tale, but it's rarely the truth.
I recall Obama having a similar problem back in 2008 and 2012. Maybe not quite as obvious, largely because is wasn't so shouted from the rooftops by the news media.
It's way too early to tell whether the Democrats have the same silly rule, since no significant legislation has actually come to a vote. We'll probably get our first indication with the Gorsuch vote - we'll see if any Democrats vote in favor. It would be nice if we could begin to see more reaching across the aisle.
The majority leaders not bringing bills from the minority to a vote is something that goes on from both sides, neither side really has room to point fingers about it. Rrhain specifically mentioned the House, but I remember Harry Ried refusing to bring several Republican bills to a vote back when he was the Senate leader.
Gorsuch is as qualified as anyone could be - he would easily be confirmed if anyone but Trump had nominated him. Schumer and his followers are gong to vote against ANYONE Trump nominates.
Combined with the "General Welfare" clause this casts a fairly wide net. You go on to discuss the clause as originally interpreted, but its interpretation has grown increasingly expansive over time, most notably about 80 years ago with the advent of social security, and later Medicare.
I agree, and I admit that some of it can be good, but not much. The founders seemed to draw a clear distinction between government involvement with "external objects", dealing with foreign countries, providing national defense etc. - things that people can't do individually. But 'internal objects', things that people can and should do for themselves, should be left to individuals. It was the reason for the 10th amendment. To briefly touch on that;
quote:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Rrhain told me that today's nuclear weapons aren't mentioned in the Constitution, but they are a logical extension of "To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces". Providing retirement plans and healthcare don't extend from anything in the Constitution, other than the very vague "general welfare" clause.
Considering the wording of the 10th amendment, I don't understand why there aren't more ~issue~ votes. How can the powers be reserved to the people without a more foolproof way of finding out the peoples opinion? I've seen lots of local issue votes on the ballot since 1972 when I first started voting, but I can't remember a single federal one. There wasn't one on the national 55 mph speed limit back then. It was a clear violation of the 10th amendment, and it did lasting damage to this day.
The significant example that comes to mind is Bill Clinton's reformulation of the welfare laws back in the 1990's.
I'll concede that one, but it was unusual for Clinton, and it was 20 years ago. The Democrats have grown more liberal since then.
A better bill meaning one that doesn't take healthcare away from 24 million Americans over the next decade?
"Take healthcare away" is a big talking point of the anti-Trump media. If they do nothing to earn it, if they recently had it handed to them at the expense of others who can't afford to prop them up, and if the mistake is being fixed, there are other ways to describe it than as a "take away". It's one of many problems when government grows too unsustainably fast, properly reigning it in gets described in emotional, not rational ways.
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