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But if the G.O.P. hangs on, there will also be other, bread-and-butter consequences for ordinary Americans. First of all, there is every reason to believe that a Republican Congress, freed from the immediate threat of elections, would do what it narrowly failed to do last year, and repeal the Affordable Care Act. This would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance and would in particular hit those with pre-existing conditions. There’s a reason health care, not Trump, is the central theme of Democratic campaigns this year. But the attack on the social safety net probably wouldn’t stop with a rollback of Obama-era expansion: Longstanding programs, very much including Social Security and Medicare, would also be on the chopping block. Who says so? Republicans themselves. (Paul Krugman, 8/23)

This insanity of the Trump Republican Party is obvious. But the irresponsibility of the Democratic left is quite troublesome: Free college, free health care, no fossil fuels, no statewide water system – on and on it goes. (David Townsend, 8/23)

If you spend any time on social media, you’re regularly subjected to touching yet ultimately numbing solicitations related to cancer, strokes, premature births, mental health crises, injuries, heart attacks, rare or chronic debilitating diseases and so on.vHere we are, in the richest, most technologically advanced nation in history, and our system for funding health care is so porous that we’ve turned hundreds of thousands of Americans into beggars rattling their digital tin cups and revealing their most intimate afflictions at their most vulnerable moments to try to avoid deep financial hardship or ruin for the “sin” of being unlucky. (Eric Zorn, 8/23)

It’s clear our government’s attempts to regulate health care have had the opposite effect of “do no harm” on patient outcomes. With a surplus of regulations, codes, and penalties on the books, health care professionals are unable to adequately service the patients they’ve devoted their careers to. As a result, patients are subjected to escalating costs and increasingly inadequate treatment across the board. (Mitra Rangarajan, 8/23)

Proposition 8 provides a classic example of a ballot measure that has no business being decided by California voters. The complex initiative designed to regulate the dialysis industry is better suited for the Legislature, where the wording of new laws can be thoroughly vetted and easily altered if problems arise. (8/23)