I seriously have the best of intentions not to be overly political in this blog, but it’s just really hard right now as the U.S. government is making absurdly ignorant policy choices that are not even consistent with their barely coherent stated goals. In this case, after stating a goal of bringing living costs down for “ordinary people” (maybe we could take that to mean the middle 50% of the income distribution?), there is a good chance Republicans will raise health insurance costs massively for people using the Affordable Care Act. (They are no longer talking about repealing that act, just adding “Un” in front of affordable.) The article I link to is from my home state of Pennsylvania, and estimates what the Good Ol’ Boy Party is proposing would raise costs more than 50% for a family of four with a household income around $125,000. Actually, they don’t have to propose anything, or even do anything at all – all they have to do is let sunset provisions in existing laws expire as they probably planned all along.

So basically, Trump and cronies assume that Americans are too busy/distracted/uninformed (I never say “stupid”) to notice that their health care costs explode if at the same time the price of everyday spending on things like gasoline and groceries were to slow down a bit. That, and they may hope to break the Affordable Care Act on purpose, point out it is broken, and then try to eliminate it. This is like intentionally breaking your own personal car and then arguing that this proves cars are not a workable technology for anyone to get from point A to point B.