Trump wants the forgotten men and women to stay forgotten

[DonViejo]

By Ruth Marcus Columnist March 17 at 7:27 PM

So much for the forgotten men and women. Judging by President Trump’s initial forays into economic policymaking, they would have been better off forgotten.

“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” Trump vowed in his inaugural address. “Everyone is listening to you now.”

They are? The Republican health-care plan that Trump endorsed and the budget he just submitted cater more to the interests of the billionaires Trump chose for his Cabinet than to the lower-income, rural and older voters who formed the backbone of his electoral support.

Indeed, if you convened health-care experts and asked them to design a system guaranteed to alienate those Trump voters, you would come up with something like the American Health Care Act. The bottom line of the Congressional Budget Office number — that 24 million fewer would have coverage by 2026 — actually understates the harms that the proposal would inflict on many Trump voters.

The insurance that people would obtain would have “lower average actuarial values” — CBO-speak for worse coverage. The high co-pays and deductibles about which Trump and other critics of Obamacare rail? “They would tend to be higher than anticipated under current law” and would climb even higher for the less well-off after 2020, when cost-sharing subsidies were repealed, “significantly increasing out-of-pocket costs . . . for many lower-income enrollees.”

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-wants-the-forgotten-men-and-women-to-stay-forgotten/2017/03/17/fad84f74-0b3d-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html?utm_term=.1e29412e6fe7&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

[raging moderate]

1. They mean a different "Forgotten Man."

There is a book written by an ultra-conservative, called "The Forgotten Man." Its main thesis is that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's New Deal was mean to the prosperous Americans of their day, and that the prosperous Americans of this day have a righteous grievance against liberals. Or something.