Anxiety and the Presidential Election

Wow. Could the mainstream media do anything more to raise our anxiety levels about the 2024 election? And diminish or negate all the recent accomplishments in our country?

Over the past three-and-a-half years, our nation’s economy has been the strongest in the world. Unemployment is at record lows, and the stock market is at record highs. NATO – which last came together to defend the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 – is stronger than ever. Border crossings are down. Massive infrastructure improvements are underway in every state. Prescription drug costs are lower. We finally got out of Afghanistan – evacuating more than 100,000 U.S. citizens and supporters – with just a handful of deaths. Inflation – which rose precipitously in the aftermath of the pandemic – has come back down, and prices in many areas have even begun to decline. And yet, all the media commentators can talk about these days – and they are not “reporters” when they are clearly offering opinions to frame the election – are President Biden’s age and verbal lapses. Let me be clear. I like Biden. And I am not a Donald Trump fan. He tends toward narcissistic fascist imperialism – pretty much what brought on World War II. I fear that he would settle the war in Ukraine by handing significant parts of it to Russia and destabilizing NATO. He worries me with his affection for autocratic dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un. He also shows evidence of unbridled rage toward so many people in our country – immigrants, veterans, civil servants, people with substance use disorders and mental illnesses, democratic thinkers from both parties, women, and children. And, oh yeah, he is a convicted criminal, was found liable for sexual assault, and comes across as a cult-leading antichrist. These are not things I – or most Americans – support. So why are the media ignoring our concerns and so intent on cutting off Biden at the knees – and leading us the direction of four years of what they uniformly describe as at best chaos and at worst the disintegration of American society? I don’t get it. And for that reason, my anxiety levels are sky-high today. Not because I believe that Joe Biden can’t possibly beat Trump again. After all, he’s up two points in one poll today, was even in another one yesterday, and the website FiveThirtyEight suggests that if the election were held today, Biden is slightly more likely than Trump to win. And this is after two straight weeks of piling on by MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and a whole bunch of others who should know better. A piling on that has dragged wimpy democrats – including 77-year-old Lloyd Doggett and 58-year-old Jim Himes, both of whom I used to admire and neither of whom is a spring chicken – to call for Biden to leave the race because of his age. For many of us, it feels like we have gone through the looking glass this year. And it feels like – in the words of the famous poet – “the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” I am a mental health voter. I vote in part because voting is an empowering action for me. It helps to preserve my own mental health. It gives me a modicum of control over my environment. For me, that includes supporting others who support mental health (Biden, by the way, has put more new resources into mental health promotion than any President in recent times), watch budgets carefully, invest in clean energy, protect access to all forms of health care, want to improve education, are pro-life from birth to death, and reduce racism and bigotry. Meanwhile, others were drawn to Donald Trump (and Bernie Sanders, for that matter) because they stood up to both mainstream media and mainstream politicians. They want to be listened to, not lectured at. Mainstream politicians and media think that Biden is the problem right now. In fact, he may be the only solution. These thoughts are my own. Feel free leave a comment or email me at gionfriddopaul@gmail.com with your own thoughts and reactions.

States and Rebates

If you run a small business in Florida, are self-employed in Texas, or work for a large corporation in New Jersey ( see an update below ), then your state insurance regulators probably haven't been working for you. The news that 15.8 million people can expect $1.3 billion in rebates from insurers this year because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) underscores how weak health insurance regulation has been in states across the country. It may come as no surprise that Florida and Texas, two leaders in the fight against ACA, have been exposed as anti-consumer. But they are not the only states with an anti-consumer bias. First, the good news: last week, the federal government announced that three-quarters of us will get letters beginning on July 1 telling us that our insurance plans paid out at least 80 to 85 cents in benefits for every premium dollar they collected. This means that under ACA they met the minimum standard for a reasonable benefit payout (which i...

The Ten Best and Ten Worst States for Your Mental Health

Connecticut spends four times more per capita on state mental health services than Texas. In Florida, 25 percent fewer people report having mental illnesses than in Washington. Across the nation, there are significant differences in the amounts states spend on mental health services. Connecticut spends $189 per capita, while Texas spends only $39. But there are also significant differences in the reported prevalence of mental illnesses. For example, fewer than 18 percent of Floridians report having a mental illness during the past year, but in Washington almost 24 percent do. But what happens when you put spending and prevalence together? Some new rankings emerge that give you a measure of each state’s real commitment to protecting mental health – and treating mental illness – in their population. This week, I have ranked all fifty states using both spending and prevalence data. I have taken per capita m...

Why the Republicans Have No Health Care Plan

There's a simple reason why (after more than a decade) Donald Trump and the Republicans have no plan to replace Obamacare. I'll explain in a few minutes. But first, some background. When the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) was passed in 2010, it was an effort to expand health care coverage to a lot of people who needed it, while controlling their costs. It had certain key provisions, not the least of which were that people couldn't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, that all chronic diseases needed to be covered fairly, and lifetime coverage caps had to be lifted. The problem was that if you left matters to insurers to set insurance premiums based on what this would cost, the price of insurance would rise dramatically. So the government took a look at three different programs and ultimately put them together into one system. For people whose income was so low that they couldn't afford any real cost-sharing, the government expanded Medicaid. For elders...

AnonymousJuly 12, 2024 at 12:24 PM
I want Biden to leave and I want Trump to go away. I am tired of these old guys having big ego trips. They had their best years decades ago. We need younger people who understand the current world and have a stake in the future.

Since this is about health, I suggest democrats get some balls and advocate for real health care reform and not just some minor changes. I think Biden is a total failure in that respect. He should have embraced Medicare for All.

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