Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live with medical debt

Re:Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live ... by lotsofpulp on Thursday June 16, 2022 @08:13AM (#31765109)

The Dems might have had 60 seats in name only, but even that was for a few months (Jul 2009 to Jan 2010). More importantly, a couple Democrats like Lieberman do not tow the party line, and frequently vote like Repubs, so I would not say Democrats ever had 60 seats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_Senate_elec...

> Democrats held at least 57 seats as a result of the election. When the new senators were first sworn in, the balance was 58–41 in favor of the Democrats, with the unresolved election in Minnesota causing that seat to remain vacant. The April 2009 party switch of Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter from Republican to Democrat and the July 2009 resolution of the Minnesota election in favor of Democrat Al Franken increased the Democratic majority to 60–40 (providing the Democrats, including the two Independent senators who caucus with them, a supermajority and thus able to hypothetically over-ride any filibusters). Republicans gained a seat in a January 2010 special election in Massachusetts, thereby making the balance 59–41 before the start of the next election cycle.

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Re:Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live ... by rayiner on Thursday June 16, 2022 @12:36PM (#31768065)

They had 60 votes to get Obamacare enacted, which was a historic achievement. Obviously your coalition won’t agree on everything and you have to keep the marginal votes on board. That’s just how politics works. My point is that there is a more potent democratic coalition out there even within the framework of the Senate system. To the contrary, the Senate system long benefited Democrats because it favors working class rural areas over moneyed industries (finance, tech, etc.) concentrated on the coasts.

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Re:Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live ... by suture on Thursday June 16, 2022 @02:30PM (#31769366)

The country and politics of the nation have shifted. The divide is rural/urban now. The cities have the vast majority of the wealth but not the accompanying representation. The rural areas of the country are overwhelmingly conservative and increasingly white nationalist in sentiment. What the state of things 50 years ago was is no longer relevant.

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Re:Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live ... by acheron on Thursday June 16, 2022 @08:16PM (#31772583)

Approximately nobody is “white nationalist”. Believing nonsense like that is not helping you.

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Re:Sick and struggling to pay, 100M people in the U.S. live ... by suture on Thursday June 16, 2022 @10:52PM (#31773654)

The election of Donald Trump was clearly a white nationalist backlash. This is obvious and it was an enabling event for more extreme elements of white nationalism. One only needs to look at the rhetoric used to see this. Don’t confuse “white nationalist” with “white supremecist” (though the latter is a subset of the former).

The underpinnings of white nationalism have been around for a while but really came to the fore in 2016. The desire to keep “our America” and other catch phrases are indicative.

EDIT: Having white, nationalist sentiments or leanings is not necessarily bad or wrong. It’s quite natural for a majority population to have such sentiments when their status as a majority gets threatened. The demographics and gender power structure of the nation is noticeably changing and having a backlash against that change is common.

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