Obamacare is probably toast - and a lot of poor, white Trump voters will get hurt by it

Donald Trump has nominated Tom Price, a GOP representative and an Affordable Care Act critic, as his secretary for Heath and Human Services. Unlike many Republicans, Price at least has given a lot of thought to how to replace the Affordable Care Act. But Price's own plan would roll back the Medicaid expansion, a substantial amount of financial assistance for others getting coverage, and a fair part of regulation of the individual market. And therefore, most likely, a lot of the 20 million people who would lose coverage due to repeal will still be without coverage, and there will no longer be protections for those with bad medical conditions.

Essentially, conservatives want way less government spending and regulations designed to help poor and sick people, protect consumers, and enforce a minimal standard for coverage. So, they're willing to tolerate way lower standards in those areas, although some want conservative reforms to try to make very cheap coverage widely available. On the other hand, liberals think we should spend and regulate to point where the nation can move toward universal care and see expanded and improved coverage as part of a bigger effort to progress towards a higher minimum standard of living. Obviously, conservatives won the election, and they get to control the country. For better or for worse.

According to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index that demonstrates that a lot of poor and middle-class whites (who voted for Trump in disproportionate numbers) have benefited from Obamacare, meaning they're probably going to suffer from its repeal (and even its replacement with something that covers far fewer people).  The Index statistics from earlier this fall conveyed that generally, the national uninsured rate has plummeted to a new low of 10%, a drop of over six percentage points since the law went into effect, which alone is a huge achievement.But this drop is even more pronounced among whites. Gallup-Healthways says that among whites without a college degree who have household incomes of under $36,000, the uninsured rate has dropped from 25% in 2013 to 15% now (a drop of 10 percentage points). It's often noted that the law has disproportionately expanded coverage among African-Americans and Latinos, which is true, but it has also done so among poor whites.

It seems more likely that we'll see a substantial rollback of the progress toward universal health care we've seen in the past few years. News companies love to go to "Trump's America" to hear voters explain that Trump spoke more directly to their economic struggles than Democrats did. Maybe now we'll get more news coverage of those citizens of "Trump's America" who are set to lose their health care, too.
 http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Obamacare-is-probably-toast-and-a-lot-of-poor-10642359.php

1. Do you agree with Trump's nomination of Tom Price as his secretary of Health and Human Services? Do you agree with Price's view on healthcare?
2. Are you more conservative or liberal when it comes to healthcare?
3. How do you think other countries view America now that Trump is our president-elect?