Why is the Republican Party in its current predicament in health-care policy? A lot of reasons, but a big one is that they now have to explain the tradeoffs of a specific plan when their standard-bearer refused to do so in 2016. On the trail, Donald Trump made sweeping promises about how much better health care would be, with no specifics or ideas about how he was going to get there:
“I am going to take care of everybody,” he told 60 Minutes. “I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now…The government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.”
“We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”
“Obamacare is going to be repealed and replaced. … You’re going to end up with great health care for a fraction of the price and that’s gonna take place immediately after we go in. Okay? Immediately. Fast. Quick.”
“I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”
You can’t keep all of those promises. Some of them are more or less contradictory. You can’t keep Medicaid intact AND repeal Obamacare, because Obamacare expanded Medicaid. If insurance companies cannot charge more for those who have preexisting conditions, it is very difficult to reduce premiums.
‘We’re Losing on the Central Promise of Trump’s Campaign.’
Planning for the wall should have begun on Nov. 9, and a spade should have been put into the earth to begin building it the day after Trump’s inauguration. Now, it’s 100 days later, and we still don’t have the whisper of a prospect of a wall.
Moreover, this isn’t one random bill funding Planned Parenthood (which this bill does). This is the budget deal. There won’t be another one like it until next October.
.. It’s theoretically possible that Trump could still build a wall, but he’s just massively lengthened the odds of ever prevailing. Sure, you can let the other team build a 20-point lead in first half and still come back to beat them, but it’s a lot easier if you don’t go into halftime 20 points down.
… Remember? There would be so much winning, we were going to get “sick and tired of winning,” and beg him, “Please, please, we can’t win anymore. … It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.”
We’re not winning. We’re losing, and we’re losing on the central promise of Trump’s campaign.
Where Trump Sees Economic ‘Disaster,’ Experts See Something More Complex
To be sure, there are some very real shortcomings that Mr. Trump identified in his campaign. They include minimal pay growth for less-skilled workers, near-record numbers of Americans not in the labor force, and disappearing factory jobs. Still, many mainstream economists say that the Trump agenda — aimed at lowering taxes, peeling back regulations and reopening trade deals — will not alter those trend lines.
“Tax cuts are unlikely to boost labor participation rates, nor will they reverse the aging of the population,” said Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays. “Less regulation could have a positive impact on long-term growth, but it is unlikely to move the needle over the next two years.”
.. As on many issues, Mr. Trump has sent conflicting signals on this subject, suggesting at times during the campaign that state increases were justified, but warning in primary debates that wages were “too high.”
.. But while the positions Mr. Lawrence is filling are middle-class jobs in Sioux Falls — they start at $45,000 to $50,000 a year, plus benefits — all require a college degree or other technical training.
.. “Stronger growth will help with the low participation rate, but what it’s not going to do is help workers who have been left behind by a lack of education or training,” Mr. Behravesh said.
.. “This is where I have trouble with Trump,” Mr. Behravesh said. “A lot of those manufacturing jobs are gone forever. He is raising expectations, but it’s not going to work. Even if they don’t go to Mexico, a lot of jobs will be automated out of existence.”
.. Mr. Behravesh is looking for the economy to grow by 2.3 percent this year, up from an estimated 1.6 percent annual pace last year. Growth could reach 2.6 percent or higher in 2018, but is very unlikely to hit the target of 4 percent growth that Mr. Trump outlined during the campaign.
The Deeper Scandal of That Brutal United Video
The share of passengers denied boarding rose until the late 1990s to about 1 in 500, but it’s fallen to about one in a thousand
.. involuntary denied boardings are affecting about six passengers per 100,000.
.. But a free-market solution would require the airlines to raise the compensation offer indefinitely until somebody accepted the offer. It’s a simple matter of fairness: If airlines are legally permitted to make false promises—and to overbook a flight is, essentially, to promise a service that cannot be fulfilled—they ought to pay market price to compensate people for the unfulfilled promise. Instead, airlines are permitted to practice a kind of bizarro capitalism, in which they can overbook with impunity and throw people off the plane after they reject an arbitrary fee.
.. airline industry is sheltered from both antitrust regulation and litigation.
.. when fuel prices fell last year, as The Atlantic’s Joe Pinsker (who edited this story and who has a relative who works at United) has written, airlines spent the savings on stock buybacks rather than pass them to consumers.
.. what recourse do they have against the company? Very little. In the last decade, class-action lawsuits have become endangered thanks to a series of Supreme Court rulings that have undercut consumer rights. Disputes over fine-print regulation are increasingly likely to be settled in arbitration, without a judge or jury