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With the mid-term elections fast approaching, there is a lot of physical campaign work to be done by the candidates, and both paid staff and volunteer workers. But we voters still need to “read up” on the issues the candidates discuss, so our votes reflect the issues we care about individually and have the greatest, positive impact on our communities .
That’s why I’ve put together a short list of recent articles by reporters and other writers who are whipped into a frenzy, facing massive amounts of pre-election information to pull together and analyze.
Let’s start with some good news first.
— According to several recent polls, the number of likely voters who support “medicare for all” has gone up considerably in the last few years and now has reached about two-thirds or approximately 66% of those surveyed. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) conducted a tracking poll in September of this year and released this report detailing the top voter concerns heading into the mid-term elections. No surprise that health care costs and gas prices lead the way:
Although Senator Bernie Sanders (I.,Vt.) was not the first elected official to propose a single payer health care system, he certainly has been the most persistent and consistent proponent in the last 25+ years.
Congressman Bernie Sanders Introduces National Health Care HR 2530
JUNE 17, 1991
— I’m going to count this next issue as one of several “October Surprises”, adding insult to injury for three quarters of a million Americans. As if eliminating Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced subsidizes that helped lower and middle class Americans pay for their skyrocketing insurance premiums wasn’t enough, the Trump Administration proudly announced it had canceled the health insurance of 750,000 people registered on the ACA exchange: for alleged “fraud”. According to an article published by NBC on September 22:
Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz — who have teamed up on a broader push to root out fraud in government health programs — said Tuesday that roughly 750,000 people have had their ACA coverage canceled. The administration did not provide details about who lost coverage or how those individuals were informed.
The cuts, Vance said, would save U.S. taxpayers $2.2 billion.
Seven hundred and fifty thousand people committing fraud? And Dr. Oz doesn’t have enough to do running Medicare and Medicaid that he spends his time trying to root out alleged fraud in a totally separate health insurance program? We, the people should be demanding proof of this “fraud” for each of the 750,000 people now without health insurance..
— Let’s not forget the legal immigrants being booted from Medicaid while waiting over a year for their Green Cards. The New York Times reported in an article published September 30, that nearly 150,000 currently legal immigrants, mostly the humanitarian population of refugees, have green card applications pending. Because these immigrants are refugees fleeing persecution, and sex trafficking victims, they were previously entitled to receive health insurance under Medicaid until their Green Cards were approved.
The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed last year terminates Medicaid coverage for these vulnerable populations as of October 1, 2026. The irony of this cruel situation is that the Trump Administration also slowed approval of Green Cards to a crawl, from 8 months approval time in 2024 to currently 18 months time to receive a Green Card after application.
Where will these refuges go for even routine health care? They’ll clog either local urgent care clinics or emergency rooms, possibly delaying immediate treatment for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who visit emergency rooms across the country each day…for emergency medical care. I’ve mentioned this forced overcrowding of emergency rooms for people without health insurance numerous times, most recently here and here.
— Finally for today’s reading round-up, let’s circle back to the fast-approaching mid-term elections, where the”affordability” issue looms for the Democrats’ taking—President Trump promised he would lower the price of everything, but instead his administration’s policies have increased the price of everything. According to recent polls, the top voter affordably concerns they will be taking into the voting booth are health care costs and transportation costs. And the astronomical price of diesel fuel has reverberated throughout the economy to increase the price of food, goods and services to the highest level in decades, ensuring that everyone but the wealthiest feel the pain.
According to a NYTimes opinion piece published on September 28, the author, Tim Wu, “a law professor who worked in the Biden administration on economic competition and tech policy", agrees that hammering home the affordability message is a winning strategy for Democrats in the mid-terms. But Mr. Wu suggests an even more important strategy for Democratic messaging, and that is what underlies affordability: inequality caused by a system rigged to favor the wealthy. I agree and so do you, judging by the popularity of this post published on The Poverty Trap in January 2024.
Here’s a quote from Mr. Wu’s opinion piece in The Times, just a few weeks ago:
A recent CBS News poll found that some 60 percent of Americans think the economy is “unfair” and that most people under 45 say they have fewer economic opportunities than their parents did. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 66 percent of Republicans said that the gap between rich and poor is a “big problem.”…. To run a proper affordability campaign — one that taps into a discontent even deeper than that over high prices — Democrats should cater to this widespread sense of unfairness. The key message is rebalancing: a promise to level out a lopsided economy that favors huge concentrations of wealth.
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I’d love to hear what you think about these issues. The affordability crisis: healthcare, gas prices, food, goods and services out-of-reach for most Americans, whether affordability and baked-in inequality are winning messages for Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections. Please share your ideas with The Poverty Trap Community in the Comment Section below:
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