One thing the analysts back in 2012 were right about is that they’d stop calling it “Obamacare” the second it started working and lo and behold anytime it was actually threatened under Trump it became The ACA and now Leftists who were in Kindergarten when the ACA was passed think Democrats have added nothing to this country.
I don’t think a lot of people remember pre-existing conditions. Like it was a thing for a long time where my mom fought to try to avoid having my brother diagnosed with asthma because she didn’t want him tagged with pre-existing condition. I wasn’t officially diagnosed with autism or depression or anything because my parents didn’t want to me to have a pre-existing condition when I became an adult that could prevent me from having insurance. Insurance companies could flat out refuse to pay for treatment if you had a pre-existing condition that could have caused the issue you were wanting them to pay for. That’s not a thing anymore. My diagnosis of lupus isn’t going to affect my ability to find insurance or use it to pay for lupus-related care if I change insurance.
Remember that bit from Parks and Rec? Yeah, that’s kind of like what it was like. That was back in 2012. The ACA made it so that:
1. No insurance plan can reject you, charge you more, or refuse to pay for essential health benefits for any condition you had before your coverage started. This means that if you get diagnosed with cancer, insurance companies can’t refuse to cover you. It means that if you have asthma, insurance companies can’t refuse to pay for inhalers because you had it before you signed on with them.
2. Once you’re enrolled, the plan can’t deny you coverage or raise your rates based only on your health. This means that when I was diagnosed with lupus, my insurance couldn’t kick me off or make me pay more.
3. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) also can’t refuse to cover you or charge you more because of your pre-existing condition. This is actually a big one, because it meant that the only coverage some people could afford wasn’t able to kick you off, refuse to cover you, or charge you more because of something like a heart murmur you had at birth. That was a real concern for us when my oldest was born. They had a heart murmur and we were terrified we would never get insurance coverage for them.
Those were real things that really happened to millions of Americans. They would get diagnosed with cancer and get kicked of their insurance. They would have a semi high blood pressure reading one time and have a heart attack 10 years later and the insurance would refuse to pay for any of it.
Obamacare killed that. And the GOP fought like hell against it. Can you imagine everyone whose ever had COVID not being covered at all under insurance? Or being charged 3 or 4 times more? Or being charged 3 times more and still not having coverage for anything that might stem from COVID? Because that’s where we would be without the ACA.
In today’s edition of: the kids are alright- so, I work at an 18th century history museum where we do the whole school tour shebang and we have clothes for the kids to dress up in. And we always say the rule is they can dress up as a girl or boy as long as they do it with respect. I usually don’t have any takers on crossdressing but today three boys (and one adorable girl) decided to take the plunge together and oh man. Nothing fills your heart more than watching a 9-10 year boy cinch the drawstrings on a horribly inaccurate petticoat like “oh this is drip. Oh I’ve got MAD drip.” Like 😊😊😊😊😊 yeah he fucking did.
The current Supreme Court is a 6-3 conservative majority.
Justice Thomas, that corrupt fascist fucker, is 75.
Justice Alito, that biased fascist fucker, is 74.
Each is married to a fascist ultra right wing woman. Ginny Thomas was actively involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Martha Ann Alito is the alleged source of the ultra right wing flags on the Alito homes.
If Trump is elected in 2024, Thomas and Alito will retire, just like Kennedy did in 2018. Trump will get to appoint two more justices in their 50s.
Like sexual assaulter and liar Kavanaugh. Or handmaid’s tale Coney Barrett. And the conservative majority will be on lock for thirty years. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett are in their 50s.
Add two more ultraconservative justices in their 50s and you have a five seat conservative majority for 30 years if they live natural lifetimes.
If Trump is elected in 2024, we’ve not only lost the Court for at least a decade (now) but another thirty years.
What other civil rights would you like to lose? Because YOU WILL. We ALL will.
Can we fucking not? CAN WE FUCKING NOT?
Vote for Biden.
Vote for Democrats for the Senate.
If I had to guess, if god forbid Trump is elected, I’d put money on Thomas and Alito promptly retiring (as @artielu notes above). Trump will then appoint probably James Ho (the Fifth Circuit insane nutjob whose hardline anti-abortion stance was too much even for the forced-birth anti-Roe wingnuts currently on SCOTUS) and Aileen Cannon, the wildly unqualified district-court hack in Florida who is holding up the Mar-a-Lago documents case at every turn in Trump’s favor and is clearly gunning for an appointment to SCOTUS as a result of the personal favors she is doing for the Godfather. James Ho is 51, Aileen Cannon is 42. They will be on the court for another 30 years at minimum. The 6-3 conservative majority will be fucking locked down for the rest of your goddamn adult lives, and anything that gets in front of SCOTUS that your allegedly progressive asses care about? Gone. And somehow it will all be Biden’s fault still, apparently? Because This Is Your Brain on Online Leftism.
It can and will get so much worse. Especially while Project 2025 and Trump are doing all the fascist shit they possibly can.
BUT. After 2016 was so epically, cosmically fucked up, in large part because of people shouting that Hillary was evil and SCOTUS didn’t matter (and then steadfastly refused to change their opinion even as a wingnut-hijacked SCOTUS functioned exactly as designed), there is still a chance to fix it. It’s not GUARANTEED that Thomas would tragically fall off his sugar daddy’s yacht and drown, or Alito would mysteriously die on a FedSoc hunting boys’ club weekend, but it could also happen. They’re both in their mid-70s, and while they won’t VOLUNTARILY retire in a second Biden term, there could also very well come a tipping point of scandal when they’re forced out. (John Roberts is also a professional ass-saver extraordinaire, and may intervene if they keep making the brand look so bad.)
Biden himself has said the next president will probably have two SCOTUS picks (most likely Thomas and Alito’s seats). If we could fill those with progressive/liberal judges, like he’s been doing with the lower courts as fast as he can in an attempt to counteract all the Heritage Foundation hacks Trump and McConnell jammed onto the bench between 2017-20, that would flip the court back 5-4 liberal. If Sotomayor retires due to health problems, which is likely even though she’s only in her late 60s, Biden would also be able to fortify her seat. The liberal wing would once more have control and could start reversing some of these horrible fucking decisions that SCOTUS pumps out on the regular, even after Biden himself was out of office.
SCOTUS is the way a president’s policy keeps functioning long after he is no longer in power. Thomas was appointed by Bush Senior. Alito was appointed by Bush Junior. Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and ACB were all appointed by Trump and they will remain in their posts for life. If Trump is then allowed to fill two MORE posts – Trump, the most unqualified, sleazy, rapist, treasonous, fascist fucking scumbag to ever seek any American political office anywhere – then yeah, there ain’t gonna be too much left to work with by the time they’re done.
This is not about Moral Purity Pearl Clutching. This is about basic pragmatic hard-tacks choices about the basic reality of how the American government fucking works. If you don’t want to vote “for” Biden, then don’t frame it that way. You are voting for him to give him the chance to fucking get rid of Thomas and Alito, who have infamously distinguished themselves as even more insane than Trump’s handpicked lunatics. You might just be able to save us from the carnage of 2016. But only if you LEARN A DAMN THING.
