California Money No Good in Georgia’s Special Election
The special election for Georgia’s Sixth District to fill the seat vacated by Secretary Price was heated. Jon Ossoff was the Democrat who ran for the seat with considerable outside support. He lost, nonetheless. A precinct captain supposedly complained that many of Jon Ossoff’s potential voters were hard to reach because they live with their parents. Democrats purportedly spent $200 per democratic vote, but I guess it wasn’t enough.
About the time Jimmy Carter was president or maybe it was after he left office, he was interviewed about Georgia politics. If I understood him correctly (I was young at the time), he explained that it was during his lifetime that the state had to pass a law limiting the number of years a wife could vote her deceased husband’s preferences. (Presumably the limit has been reduced to zero since then.) I guess this means there was a time when it was legal for dead people to vote in Georgia. I wonder if some of them voted in Tuesday’s special election?
The special election was the most expensive House race in history. This is an illustrate how divisive the politics in the time of President Trump is; and the GOP health initiative in particular. The election was not so much about the preferences of Georgians from the Sixth Congressional District as it was about outside interests intent on swaying the election and denying Trump the votes he needs to pass his agenda.
Jon Ossoff, the young Democrat who ran for the seat, received 808 private donations from inside his district. These are people who supported him and presumably could vote for him. By contrast, nine times that number of donors were from people who could not vote for him because they lived in… California! Approximately, 7,218 private donations were received from California residents. Ossoff had nearly four times as many donors from the San Francisco Bay area as donors from his district. He raised nearly six times the funds as his victorious opponent, Karen Handel
So I ask you: Was this election about Trump? Or was it about health care?
Today is my birthday Devon. Maybe the Senate will give me a nice present with a good Obamacare replacement today. If the Senate outlaws medically underwritten Individual Medical (IM) insurance the CBO should raise the uninsured population to much more than just 22 million more.
In Iowa Medica is staying but raising premiums 43% so a 30-year-old couple with 2 children will go up to $19,000 a year with a $6,400 per person deductible. The Republican age-based tax credits of $9,000, going up by CPI +1, won’t help much in the future.
My little brother in Ames is 60-years-old with 2 children, his youngest is 12. His family’s premium in 2018 will be $40,000 a year with a $6,400 per person deductible and his Republican tax credits will only be $12,000 per year. Imagine what his premiums will be in 4 years with the death spiral, $80,000 a year?
My question is, if we are paying for High Risk Pools (HRP) why can’t the vast majority of Americans get the security of low-cost medically underwritten personal, portable and permanent Individual Medical (IM) insurance? Don’t bother to answer, as if you would, low-cost insurance would destroy employer-based insurance in America, Blue Cross, and we will have civil war before we would allow that.
Good news, U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) has made me his Health Insurance Adviser for both of his Advisory Committees, Pasco and Pinellas Counties. His guy in D.C. isn’t licensed like me.
https://www.donaldtrumphsa.com/2017/06/20/u-s-rep-gus-bilirakis-health-insurance-adviser/
Happy birthday Ron! I would love for the Senate to give you a present in the form of a decent Obamacare replacement!