Although the Senate elections got all the media attention. The governor elections show the big picture. The Republicans won 24-10. It is hard to imagine all these Democratic governor candidates being that bad. This shows that a majority of the people motivated to vote feel bad about the way this country is going. Obama and the Democrats are getting the blame.
This is the norm for American politics. The party in power gets the blame or credit for the way people feel about how things are going. This happens whether the party in power deserves it or not. If a recession starts and unemployment goes up, the party in power gets whacked at the polls. As the economy recovers, the party in power brags how it fixed the economy even if they had little to do with it. Capitalism has always had its ups and downs. If you are in the right place at the right time you can surf the economy. Our political parties do it all the time.
Before I go on I want to make it clear to anyone not familiar with my dislike for both parties that I am not trying to make a case that the Democrats are innocent bystanders. Both parties are dominated by campaign contributions. Seeds that were sown by both parties many years back are bearing their fruit today. The healthcare fruits are very bitter.
Healthcare has been undermining our economy and robbing us. In the last 20 years, real income in the U.S. has hardly grown while healthcare costs have skyrocketed. Without very significant reorganization, things must get worse.
There is a economic cause and effect relationship. The more employers have to pay for healthcare insurance; the less they can put into paychecks. This is invisible to the average worker. They feel it without knowing what is causing it.
American healthcare is overwhelmingly the most expensive in the world and a significant number of us are without it. Obamacare attempted to cover everyone, but failed significantly due in large part to Republicans blocking the expansion of Medicaid. It also left most of the malfunctioning healthcare elements that are making it so expensive basically intact.
Obamacare is only the tip of the iceberg. The media focuses on it without giving ample attention to how dysfunctional the whole system is. The Democrats get the blame for healthcare cost pain while the Republicans are more to blame.
Healthcare insurance continues to suck money from paychecks before they are printed with employers absorbing increased costs. The damage is now spilling over after the paychecks are cut with higher deductibles, copays and less things covered. The people are feeling more financial pain, but don’t realize Obamacare is not the cause of this. It is only a symptom. They are taking it out on the Democrats anyway. They deserve it , but the Republicans do too.
The Republicans are much to blame for Obamacare. Their ideology has helped to create and promotes our healthcare disaster. Their high resistance to campaign contribution limitations gives the big healthcare insurance and drug companies basic control of congress. These companies hatched Obamacare. They are our problem.
With the House and Senate now under their control, the Republicans will start to try to repeal Obamacare. The Democrats will probably filibuster Senate bills while Obama will veto them. While all of this is happening, the Supreme Court will probably undermine the federal exchange subsidies. What a mess all of this will be.
Meanwhile, American healthcare will cover fewer people directly and indirectly with higher copays, deductibles and other ways. The Republicans offer no realistic solutions. Their foggy ideology offers “free market” solutions like the drug monopolies and unnecessary healthcare insurance companies that only make everything more expensive and aggravating.
The political pendulum will continue to swing against the Democrats with the help of these and other healthcare reasons like the poor handling of the Ebola threat.
The American people are caught between a political “rock and a hard spot”. They go back and forth from one party to another. The answer to our healthcare disaster is in Western Europe, Canada and Japan where they spend half what we do per person and cover everyone. They even live as long as we do if not longer. We must copy some form of their systems.
We also must learn from them how to deal with the corruption of campaign contributions. It may take a third party. The present parties represent the big corporations first and us later.
Note: This is a long diary. For more detail on what is wrong with our healthcare and what we must do to save it from disintegration visit http://reorganizehealthcare.com/