re: #23 Anymouse

My wife (Type II diabetes) is fortunately covered by single-payer health care (CHAMPUS/TRICARE). If the Republicans have the chutzpah to gun for Medicare, I suspect CHAMPUS will be next.

I have the Veterans Administration, but they have already been champing at the bit to privatise the VA. Virtually everyone in the VA medical system could be argued to have a “pre-existing” condition.

The gutting of healthcare is my primary personal worry*. I have seen the bills before the insurance discounts kick in, and even then I have accumulated 60K in charges so far this year with more to follow. Without reasonable insurance this year alone would have been a complete and total financial disaster.

* - I say that since I am not in a demographic that is going to be targeted (white male), have a fairly secure job, live in a fairly liberal area (PA went red, but Philadelphia is pretty blue), and have enough of a nest egg to handle some adversity if things really start to go bad. My concerns are for others I know, the eroding of the protections and structures we have (political, economic, and environmental), and some simple unease and fear about things getting much worse and then taking a long time to recover.

I guess I await to see what seriously starts to happen once the immediate post-election wave of rhetoric recedes. That will indicate to some degree the level of crap that will go down in the short-term. The long-term damage will only come out once the inevitable scandals come to light, along with the indications of whether we will ever again have a national media willing to play the role they need to play in a working democracy.