2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I Refuse to Believe that the Majority of Americans Want to Do Away With Medicare [View all]mzteaze
(448 posts)I have a friend who is a Republican...who lives in the South. Yet, his feeling are that Obamacare is illegal (that people can't be forced to pay for insurance regardless of the SCOTUS ruling) and that he shouldn't have to pay for other people's medical needs. Maybe a bit illogical but fair enough.
Until you consider, a few factors: he works in an at-will job that should be civil service and that his father is evidently a veteran of modest means. Currently, his father faces losing benefits because of family assets and they don't have enough to cover his needs without sufficient Medicare or his VA coverage. Now, to talk about voting against your own interests, the Rep state governor has already rejected Federal funds for Medicare/Medicaid as a ploy to make Obama look bad, but it's also a poor state. Guess who get caught in the middle of state's the decision to cut quite a bit of the program down?
So I asked him one day, why would you vote for someone that wants to dismantle the program in the way that Romney & Ryan advocate. He says that we need a small government and medical costs are expensive. My response is Ok but if that happens, you will have to pay MORE out of pocket because there are less programs out such as VA, Medicare/Medicaid, etc. His response was that we can handle it and the states will take on more. At this point, I'm thinking WTF? But asked, you do realize that if federal funding goes, many states will cut or eliminate the programs to meet their own budgets, so what do you think happens then? At this point, he didn't want to continue the conversation so changed the subject.
But he still wants to vote for Romney cuz Obama "has been horrible." So you never know...