My father always said there was no sane reason for anyone who wasn’t wealthy to vote for a Republican, and nothing proves his point more than the ongoing Republican fuckery over healthcare. Here’s Paul Waldman summing up the worst-case scenario, via Public Notice:
Most Americans probably don’t have a detailed grasp of what’s happening with subsidies right now, but once people start getting letters notifying them of how much their premiums are going up, it will become a much bigger issue. At the moment, according to the latest KFF tracking poll, 78 percent of Americans favor extending the subsidies — including 59 percent of Republicans. To try to win the support of Senate Democrats, Republicans have suggested they’d promise to hold a vote on extending the subsidies after the government reopens, which is very different from actually extending them.
As important as this immediate context is, we should also look past it to what Republicans might do next, however the shutdown is resolved.
There are certainly some in the GOP who would rather they could just stop worrying about healthcare. They don’t particularly care about whether people have coverage — or more properly, all the people they care about already have coverage, and they don’t much care if anyone else does. And as a political issue, it’s a loser for them.
