“We must find better ways to honor and support the basic goodness of our children, especially in social media,” Mrs. Trump said at a Pennsylvania rally last week. “It will be one of the main focuses of my work, if I am privileged enough to become your first lady.”
Ironically, the International Bullying Prevention Association conference took place during the first part of this week and during Election Day.
“We know that traditional bullying results in higher rates of anxiety and depression and even higher risks of suicidal ideation and lower self-esteem and the research shows that we’re seeing similar impacts from cyber-bullying as well. It’s most likely to be harmful when there is that mixed harassment of bullying and cyber-bullying that occur together,” IBPA president Patricia Agatston said.
In a single day, Raw Story has reported on three cases of pro-Trump related bullying of students. The first occurred when students in Minnesota were greeted with "F*ck n*ggers" written on their door. A Michigan middle school had a small group of children chanting "build that wall," while their fellow students, who are Latino, were crying. Another school, this one in Pennsylvania, had students marching with Donald Trump signs while chanting "white power." We also covered a story of Trump supporters, who filmed themselves driving through Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton's alma mater and harassing black students. George Zimmerman was also kicked out of a bar for calling someone a "n*gger lover," though he wasn't embolden by Trump. That's just who he is.
Thursday, we covered a south Philly neighborhood subjected to Nazi graffiti. A Utah man told a neighbor boy, "get out of here n*gger" — then attacked the boy's dad with stun cane.
Friday, a report came in of an Afghanistan war veteran, who was rammed with a truck by Trump supporters. He was holding a sign reading "Veterans Against Trump." The supporters tried to engage with him but when they were told police were on their way they fled the scene. Friday, we also learned that a Florida High School now has "white" and "colored" water fountain after students put up signs.
While there have not been many of these, there are incidents of anti-Trump violence. In the case of a Los Angeles school, Trump supporters were attacked and one principal is on leave after anti-Trump attacks. Another with anti-Trump protesters in College Park. Another man was also robbed and assaulted.
Saturday, Raw Story wrote about a teacher caught taunting a Latina student and her parents in Los Angels. In Gwinnett County, Georgia, a Muslim high school teacher received a note from her student telling her to hang herself with her own "headscarf." The famous aren't safe either. Trump supporters threatened and harassed some of the stars of HBO’s "Silicon Valley" at a Los Angeles bar.
Sunday, the phrase "Hang a n****r from a tree" was painted over a sign that said "equal rights." Police are taking action against it.
Monday, Raw Story reported an incident where "Heil Trump" was painted. The vandals attacked an Indiana church with a swastika and anti-gay slur while praising Trump. We also learned on Monday that Donald Trump supporters partied in KKK garb to celebrate election, Connecticut officials said. Another incident occurred where a male Trump supporter sucker-punched a woman after a political argument. He then left the scene before police could arrive.
Thus far Melania Trump has not commented on any of these incidents.
Unfortunately, there have been so many of these stories we decided to begin compiling a list of them here:
Here's a tweet from a young black student who captured a white boy calling him "a n*gger" and said that he "should be pickin' cotton."
The Texas Statesman reports vigilante squads that are being organized at Texas State University.
Elon University students in North Carolina were welcomed to this message when they walked into Kivette Hall Room 100 this morning:
An African American student at Temple University in Philadelphia reported that a white fraternity brother shouted at her. "Are you frustrated? Are you sad by what's happened? Smile b*tch!"
Kansas City middle school child was taunted with deportation from his fellow students. Later at lunch the two boys got into an argument, food was thrown and a full lunch tray was thrown at the boy.
Yarden Katz, a fellow in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School tweeted about a white postal worker in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was filling up his USPS truck at a gas station. The man shouted at Katz, "Go back to your country. This is Trump land. You ain't getting your check no more." Katz noted before posting the report that "corporate journalists have repeatedly failed the public by catering to elite interests. This election's coverage is only latest failure."
This was a truck in south Philly this morning:
White students at Southern Illinois University donning blackface in front of a Confederate flag.
Mexican students were targeted by Trump supporters, who were making racial slurs in Woodland, California.
Southern Lehigh High School in Center Valley, Pennsylvania had cases of students attacked by their classmates yelling gay slurs and the n-word, but the incidents occurred last week. African American students were also called "cotton pickers" and some have even been using heil Hitler salutes.
LehighValleyLive reported that high school Principal Christine Siegfried had to have a special assembly and send a letter home with parents addressing the way that classmates should treat their fellow students.
Someone posted this graphic on Facebook of a Bucks County, Pennsylvania school administration official talking about things they were seeing from their students in school today. It's unclear where the image originated, so take that with a grain of salt.
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This happened at a high school in central Florida:
That wasn't the only anti-Muslim attack. The Southern Poverty Law Center is reporting multiple attacks.
This was the door to the prayer room on the NYU campus:
New Jersey high school students chanting "10 feet higher" at Latino students in the halls.
Greeley, Colorado student humiliated by fellow students because she's Latino.
DeWitt Junior High School in Lansing, Michigan was the sight of another attack. White students formed a human wall and refused to allow Latino students to enter the school. Later that morning other students also laid down to form a wall in the hallways and chanted "build that wall" though no one was blocked at that time, The Lansing State Journal reported.
Zoie Gilpin, a sophomore at the University of Oregon, went to a Black Student Union meeting on campus Wednesday night. He found three young people wearing blackface on campus and recorded the video below:
Racial messages have also been found in an off-campus apartment near the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, WKBT reported. The message was written in black on a white door and said, "Go home n*gger."
"I think the people that who are sometimes saying that this is exaggerated or you're making too much out of it, that they really need to take a good look at these things, because this is true hate, and it has no place on our campus or community,” UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow said.
A message of unity taken from a quote from activist Shaun King was painted onto a sign. It read, “Dear Muslims, immigrants, women, disabled, LGBTQ and all people of color, we love you boldly and proudly. We will endure." Someone spray-painted Trump 2016 over it.
Mr. King has also begun listing these incidents on his Twitter feed.
This woman was pumping gas at a station in Sandy Springs, a suburb outside of Atlanta, Georgia. "I'm so tired of you uppity f*cking n*ggers!" the man shouted.
"Hey n*gger. Pick that up. Keep my streets clean," one white Trump supporter shouted to Black woman in Indiana, Mr. King reported.
King posted another screen capture of a Facebook post about a student at Plano East Senior High, in Plano, Texas who also had her hijab ripped off. King remarked he's received at least 50 incidents of this over the last two days.
Mr. King posted a screen capture of a note he received from July Thompson at Townson University in Maryland. Two Black men in her class were followed by white students on campus shouting the n-word. Mr. King conveyed this wasn't the first person from the campus to reach out to him.
A Latino mother in Ventura, California reported seeing 5th graders proudly chanting, "Build that wall."
"Go back to Asia," said one white man to an American citizen. Mr. King confessed his in-box is flooded with 3,000+ emails of similar incidents nationwide.
One of the more heartbreaking stories Mr. King tweeted came from a nurse at a cardiology facility. A patient of hers was an Iranian woman, who has been a citizen since 1986. She had to have a heart monitor put on her, which included multiple wires going in and out of her clothing and connecting to a small black box about the size of a cell phone. She asked if she could have a letter to carry with her from the doctor's office so people wouldn't think she was carrying a bomb and murder her.
Then there was this:
An Asian woman attacked by a man at a gas station in Napa Valley, California. She was filling her car up when he ran toward her shouting, "We won. Now get the f*ck out of my country."
An Asian man in Simi Valley, California was followed by white men who told him that pure America was coming back.
Another Asian man pumping gas was subjected to "Go back to China, you chink." Not that it matters but he wasn't even Chinese.
A young Latino boy beaten and called a "stupid Mexican" by kids who said that they couldn't wait for him to be deported. Police told the mom that it was a "school matter."
On a car in North Carolina:
"Fuck you n*gger b*tch. Trump is going to deport you back to Africa," in Indiana.
"How scared are you, you black b*tch" one woman was asked in Delaware.
A Black Washington state woman who had "go back to Africa" roared at her.
UPDATE: The students were suspended per Shaun King:
The West Village. At Macdougal Ale House - New York City. A man grabbed a woman and began kissing her. She did't know him. When people told him to stop he replied, "But Trump just won the Presidential race."
North Carolina:
"Trump won, n*gger! You lose, b*tch!" in Sanford, Florida:
York, Pennsylvania:
York Tech High School in Pennsylvania, the same place we wrote about above that the "white power" march took place. A girl's breasts were grabbed by a male student, who said, "It's what Trump said he does and he was elected President."
A Black woman in Queens, New York was told to go to the back of the bus.
Baylor University student in Texas:
"Time to get out of this country, Apu!" at a gas station in California:
Muslims in San Francisco, California told to leave the United States.
Also in San Francisco, specifically in Noe Valley/Dolores Heights, a Nazi flag waves:
"Go back to Africa" in Bloomgingdale, Florida:
Student in Alabama brought in a Trump sign and told a Black student "now it's time to get back in your place."
"I can't wait until Trump asks us to rape your people and send you back over the biggest damn wall we're going to build. Go back to hell, wet back." A man, who then threw water in the girl's face. Southern California.
White men attempting to grab a woman by the genitals.
A Facebook friend of mine reported this from an Oklahoma school.
"I'm so glad Trump won. Now all the n*ggers can go back to where they came from."
One teacher: "As the day went on I saw countless of my Latina students crying and sad because of what this may mean for their families. I had a rather large amount of African American students come into the office to be consoled by me, crying for their friends and loved ones. The icing on the cake perhaps was when this Caucasian boy told a room full of minorities (shool is mostly Latinos and Black) that he can't wait until all the n*ggers and Mexicans get sent back to Africa."
A woman in La Palma, California driving around looking for recycling stops began yelling at this man and his workers: "Trump is get'n all of y'all outta here. No Visa, no America."
A man ripped off a Muslim woman’s Hijab at the University of California at San Diego. KTLA also reports a lot of racist graffiti.
Ben Cheng told his snapchat friends "Got some triggered ass n*ggers in history class. lmaooooooo one said fight me and all I can think of is leaving her half dead."
At a gas station in Andover, Massachusettes, a group of four white men in a car threw a water bottle at her but misses and screams, "Time to go back to your country bitch, my man trump is on top now and we don't want you here!"
Kindergartners in West Valley City, Utah, waiting in line and a little girl and boy say that they voted for Trump and told a Latino child he would be going to a different school because he'll be in Mexico.
"I can do anything now because I'm white," one girl heard at school the day after the election.
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Muslim woman had a knife pulled on her:
A friend in Topeka, Kansas had "man hater" shouted at her.
"Your time's up, girly," a man in Brooklyn, NY shouted at a woman.
"Go back where you came from," on the streets of Los Angels.
Chanting "Build that wall" at a Latino child in the gym at school.
Car vandalized in Knoxville, Tennessee. Not nearly as bad as people being attacked. Cars can be cleaned and replaced. People can't. Still. Trump's America.
Whoever did this I'm throwin' hands pic.twitter.com/9Xn1YaCFmK
— Chris Weatherd ™ (@Chris_Weatherd) November 9, 2016
Wake Forest University - students running around shouting the N-word.
"Black lives don't matter, and neither do your votes." Durham, North Carolina.
"I walked into my room and my heart aches with pain," Maria tweeted. Her college roommate build a symbolic wall between them in their room. She left a note saying "Hey Maria, Trump won so... here's a little preview of what is to come. #Wall <3 Izzy"
Chicago:
"Go back to your country you chink" - in New York City:
Car in Boston, Mass.
"Dumb ass gook"
Children in classrooms are afraid:
"You're still here?"
Hijab pulled off at Walmart:
Utah Valley University students:
University of Minnesota:
"Go back to Asia." When she tried to walk away he stopped her and said, "Don't you know it's disrespectful to walk away from someone when they are talking to you?"
East Brunswick, NJ. Trump-supporting boss standing with his green-card carrying employee.
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"My sister got added to a group called 'n*gger lynching.'" University of Pennsylvania
At an event near Cincinnati, Ohio two men threatened to "Donald Trump" (a verb) a female security guard when she would not let them through.
In Washington, DC: Members of the armed forces "look to have just come from Arlington Cemetery" who said to an attorney walking home, "You know, I didn't go to Vietnam to serve you. It's a good thing you'll be gone soon." As they walked off, another said, "It'll be great again soon."
WUSA9 reports that a Montgomery County middle school had swastikas on the walls in the boy's bathroom. They were done in pen, pencil and glue-stick. Officials said they are “very saddened by this incident” and that this “type of behavior will not be tolerated.”
A teacher's student had to have her aunts pick a girl up from school today because a boy grabbed her genitals. She's 10 years old. When asked why he did it, the boy said that if a president can do it, he can too.
A truck driving through Brooksville, Florida is generating a lot of fear.
Blood drive sign in a high school has "P.S. Not for N*ggers" written on it.
Kimberly was egged and told to go back to Chink town in Woodland Hills, a surburb northwest of Los Angeles, California.
Gay, black and a woman will get you attacked in Los Angels. One 15 year old girl was grabbed in the crotch by a stranger.
This comes from Kingsburg, California. The woman that sent it to me shared it with permission from her friend. She told me that when she shared it on her Facebook page "many of my Conservative friends insisted that Trump wasn't to blame, 'This stuff has been happening forever,'" they told her. "And they don't understand why people are scared. My head and my heart hurt," she wrote.
"No N*ggers at My School" written on the bathroom mirror at Denfeld High School in Duluth, Minnesota.
According to KBJR6, Superintendent, Bill Gronseth sent out this statement late Friday: "At a time of a divided country, we want to be clear that intolerance or hatred is not acceptable in our schools. We strive for safe and welcoming school environments."
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While standing in line at a McDonalds in Weaverville, North Carolina, which is outside of Asheville. The man was sitting in the drive-thru and a big beat-up truck pulled beside him. The driver said, "Hey, boy! Yea, you, I got some work for you in my fields. Don't matter no way, I'll own you soon." As they drove away his friends yelled "TRUMP 2016!"
Canadian University where Jews have been targeted:
The Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce had a fire in Cincinatti, Ohio. It's unclear what was the start of the fire.
WHITES ONLY was written on bathroom stalls in Gurnee, Illinois, which is a suburb outside of Chicago.
"I guess it all goes back to Trump's election. He's not even president yet and this is already happening," student Stephanie Vega told ABC7 Chicago.
In Seattle, Washington a man shouted: I'm going to "get the president and f*ck up your gay-ass sh*t." The women said that apparently she has a "dyke" haircut and he explained she's "not getting any d*ck." The man apparently was screaming at another woman as well until she screamed back and ran away.
Hindi students at the University of Kansas, my alma matter, were pushed off of a bus. "Go back to your country so you can stop stealing our jobs." There were also derogatory words used. Not one person intervened. Other students on campus have been harassed and a professor of color was also verbally assaulted. The student involved is thinking of leaving the University. Way to go, KU. Now you know why I don't give to the alumni association.
She was walking to the bus on her way to work when five white "probably college" kids passed by in a truck screaming "White power" and "Get out of here n*gger."
Four men, one with a gun, at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, drove by with a Nazi flag and a Confederate flag. The truck pulled up beside him. "You don't belong in our town you f*cking banana n*gger eating monkey." They kept shouting "n*gger, n*gger, n*gger" at him.
A black veteran with a service dog at the Chili's in Cedar Hill, Texas. He was approached by a man in his 70s wearing a Trump shirt. The man asked if he was in the 24th unit, the veteran corrected him and said no, the 25th. The older man explained he was in Germany and they did not let Blacks serve over there. As he was leaving, manager Wesley Patrick told the veteran that he wasn't a real soldier because he wore his had indoors. He demanded the veteran show his military ID, the veteran did. The manager then said "the guest also said your dog is not a service dog." The rest is what happened below:
A Korean American woman in Houston, Texas was confronted by a Trump supporter and told she needed to "go back home" and to stop taking people's jobs. The man continued, "Your people come over here and take away our jobs as doctors. But once you're all back in your countries, where you belong, that'll change. This is a new country."
This took place on a BART train in the Bay Area. The woman in the video told the woman filming the video that she was a "mean person" and "a terrorist who will probably be deported."
This happened on the BART train in the Bay Area.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) November 12, 2016
"You are a terrorist who will probably be deported." pic.twitter.com/yAfp5WYzDd
A woman with Hillary Clinton bumpter stickers on her car was chased and harassed by two people on the highway in Oklahoma City (my hometown). They called her a c*nt, a f*cking b*tch, stupid b*tch and other names for supporting Clinton. All while chasing her on the highway.
This woman was at the gym and came back to this note left on the windshield of her car. "N*ggers not welcomed here... Better watch your back. Trump 2016! Make America White Again!"
White men in a truck at Walmart doing donuts in the parking lot tossed two gas station sized cups of chewing tobacco then spit on her before calling her a n*gger b*tch & saying she needed to go back to Africa. "This is white man's land! Make America WHITE again!"
This is a women's bathroom stall at State University of New York System. "Fuck N*ggers" and "Isis is Calling. Muslims Can Leave" and "F*ck Stupid Latino Immigrants" with a heart followed by Trump.
Here's something that is incredibly messed up. Two students in Shaker Heights, Ohio were suspended after exposing racism from fellow students they saw on Twitter.
"It was the day after the election, my friend who is no longer my friend put on a snap story about black people," said Shaker Heights junior Elena Weingard, according to the Fox 8 report.
"I explained what happened to the vice principal. Basically, I'm at fault because I put a private message on a public forum," Weingard said.
"Take your Muslim Somalian Diaspora and put it where the sun doesn't shine." Anti-Somali signs in Minnesota.
On Veteran's Day, soldier Maria Boyle was told to "go back to Mexico" and that she was a "terrorist." She's from the Philippines, by the way. She was waiting in line for her free Veteran's Day meal.
A Trump supporter lost his mind when he saw a woman wearing a "Latinos for Hillary" button. "He asked me where I was from and once he heard my accent he told me my days were counted. He told me his president was gonna get rid of me and everyone like me. He told me he would make sure they killed me for trespassing. He told me he would rape my corpse and throw it over the wall to not have to deal with more trash."
Ogden, Utah: Aaron Feller McFarland and his husband, Nik McFarland, woke up to find the slurs “FAGET” and “HOMO DIE," the ACLU reports.
"Pretty soon it'll be legal again for me to own you," a woman overheard a man saying to a Black woman in the Reno, Nevada Target parking lot.
"Go back to Mexico you fat Spic," a Florida man yelled at a woman before speeding off. She's lived in Florida for over 30 years and she said this was the first time she's ever felt unsafe.
Five white men kept yelling, "Let's grab her by the pussy." Her Black daughter works at Dunkin Donuts part-time while studying dance at a prestigious dance school in NYC.
The New School is a university in New York City for scholarly activists, fearless artists, and convention-defying designers. Yet, this was drawn on a whiteboard on the door of a dorm room where three Jewish women live.
Swastikas and other inappropriate images were spray-painted on school banners, sidewalks and telephone poles at Burning Tree Elementary School in Bethesda, Maryland, according to Bethesda Magazine.
In Pittsburg, Pennsylvania a man almost ran over a person in the crosswalk wearing a Hijab so I beeped at them and they rolled down their window and said this is Trump's America now.
The apartment of a Ph.D. candidate at University of California t Davis got a swastika painted on it.
A student wearing a hijab at the University of Michigan in An Arbor was approached by an unknown man, who demanded she remove the hijab or he would set her on fire with a lighter. The man was white, 20-30 years old, average height, athletic build, bad body odor, unkempt appearance and likely intoxicated with slurred speech. If you know someone who fits this description, please contact police.
Roseville Joint Union High School outside of Sacrament, California had swastikas drawn on the walls in felt-tip marker. ABC-10 reports that District Superintendent Ron Severson found it Thursday. “We have no tolerance for this type of behavior at Roseville or any of our campuses,” he said.
“My first thought was this is a hate crime. It’s put here for a reason and it was strategically put there for a reason,” said MeKala Mcneil, a University of Mississippi student who saw a swastika drawn in the dorm elevator. WREG reports that a suspect has been found thanks to surveillance footage.
“These are tough times for people who are black, people of color, Muslim, LGBTQ these are tough times for us,” added Mcneil. “The day after election we both decided not to come to campus because we were afraid.”
Bloomington, Indiana's B-Line trail had swastikas and KKK letters written all over the sidewalk and light posts, according to Indiana Public Media. Administrative Captain Steve Kellams "said he does not know the motivation for the vandalism, which was present in six different areas of the trail. But this graffiti is not the first incident of vandalism in Bloomington this year."
In the Puget Sound area, a few miles east of Seattle -Bellevue Square Park painted on north fountain wall some Nazi graffiti:
A disabled man in Tacoma, Washington asked who he voted for. When he answered Hillary, the man shoved him.
"He shoved me really hard and I ended up falling over the curb and scratching myself pretty bad," he said in a Reddit post. "The guy ran off after that and I ended up calling the police. I've never been hurt living here and this probably means I'm gonna have to stop taking my walks. My spine is fused to titanium rods, my heart is part plastic and less than six months ago I shattered my humerus, not to mention that I'm blind in one eye. If you gotta shove a disabled guy to prove your point, you're a loser."
A server at brunch today in Washington, DC told me that when she works on the patio people walking by have been making comments. One said, "Go back to where you came from." She's from Maryland.
An Traverse City police officer was caught flying the Confederal flag after drinking a beer at Friday's "Love Trumps Hate" rally, DIY Legal reports.
Reed College, Portland, Oregon, last week had someone write on the walls. "The white man is back in power you f*cking fa**ots." They also posted "F*ck all you liberal n*ggers pie." A swastika and "Trump" also appeared. Photos by: Nico Villareal.
Church vandalized with Pro-Trump racist message in Latino neighborhood in Maryland. "Trump Nation: Whites Only," the sign read.
Cyber-bullying is also happening all over the internet:
There are so many more that our readers and friends are sending to us. Please continue to do so and we'll add them as well. I'm also hearing reports of women being grabbed and harassed by men. Please send those to me as well sarah at rawstory.com.
There are several reasons for this. First, Trump would face political and financial fall-out from repeal. Second, even with Republican majorities now in the House and Senate, it would be hard to repeal the entire bill. It includes not only the establishment of the exchanges, in which people buy insurance, but also cost-saving and quality-improvement measures. Many health care professionals, systems and tax payers welcomed these.
Full repeal of the Affordable Care Act would result in at least 18 million Americans losing health care coverage, and that would come at a political and economic cost. According to the Commonwealth Fund, it would actually cost the federal government about US$41 billion.
Many of those 18 million, such as those with pre-existing conditions, would lose coverage because health insurance would not longer be offered to them at any price. Others
would lose coverage because they would no longer be able to afford health insurance, assuming that subsidies go away.
Repeal would mean fewer resources for health care, especially in rural areas, resulting in decreased access to care.
Trump, even with the House and Senate behind him, would still face a practical hurdle. Full repeal may require 60 votes in a narrowly divided Senate.
In addition, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act with something entirely different without severely reducing access to care may be impossible. That’s because it’s the only system devised so far that uses the private market to increase coverage and that stops short of single payer government-run programs.
For decades, policy makers and politicians have tried to devise a way to use private markets to expand coverage to those not covered by employer-sponsored insurance.
The health reform framework that became the Affordable Care Act has a long history and many champions from all political philosophies. While the ACA will long be associated with Pres. Obama and is most often called Obamacare, many other politicians and policy makers had been working on similar plans for years.
The basic structure of a regulated individual insurance market with limits on pre-existing exclusions and health insurance marketplaces arose from a desire to provide access to affordable health insurance for individuals without coverage through their employer.
The challenge in designing a private insurance market for individuals was to match employer plans’ ability to pool risk. In employment-based coverage, employees are given coverage as part of their compensation. So healthier individuals are part of the insurance pool.
In purchasing insurance as individuals, consumers weigh their own risks of needing care against the cost of insurance. Some healthier individuals will rationally choose not by coverage given their lower probability of needing health care. As a result, insurers in the individual market found that consumers waited until they needed care before they purchased coverage.
That meant that insurers could never charge a premium high enough to cover costs. As a result, they excluded claims for pre-existing coverage, denied or canceled coverage for some and charged higher premiums in the individual market for less coverage then was available through employer-based plans.
Without these exclusions, the individual market’s insurance pool is more costly, which increases premiums driving more of the healthier individuals out of the market and eventually resulting in no market at all. When people became sick with a catastrophic illness, financial disaster was common. Or, people with chronic illnesses, including diabetes and depression, faced such high premiums that they could not afford them. They went without insurance, and they, too, were vulnerable to financial ruin.
The recession of the early 1990s resulted in two million Americans losing their employment-based coverage. In the 1992 presidential election campaign, both incumbent George H. W. Bush and candidate Bill Clinton had health care reform plans. Both plans were structured similarly to the Affordable Care Act.
They both created insurance purchasing pools (similar to the ACA marketplaces), eliminated pre-existing exclusion clauses and had individual mandates and subsidies for low-income families. After the election, when it became apparent that the Clinton administration plan would be different from those plans, a group of Republican senators led by Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) developed a proposal that had all of these attributes.
In the early years of the 21st century, then-Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts asked his staff to find ways to reduce the burden of the uninsured on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Searching for a market-based approach, they found their options narrow to a plan similar to Sen. Chafee’s. At the time the individual mandate penalty was described not as a tax but as a measure of personal responsibility for paying for one’s own health care.
The Massachusetts plan became the model for the Affordable Care Act.
The reason all of these proposals resemble each other and the Affordable Care Act is that there are limited options for creating a sustainable private insurance market that allows individuals access to affordable health insurance.
Trump may be able to repeal the law and return to health care coverage as we knew it in 2010. Consequences, however, will be a sudden drop in access to care not just for those who lose coverage, but for many others who will lose access to care because their local hospital closes, or nearest doctor moves out of areas with high percentages of uninsured.
Replaced requires something that looks like the ACA: Trumpcare, perhaps?
By Bill Custer, Director of Center for Health Services Reseach, Associate Professor, Georgia State University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
