I tend to keep replies fairly short and relative to only my personal thoughts and experiences, as I am not an expert in American history and greatly dislike arguments with strangers on the Internet. Many of his cabinet picks currently stand to profit from the policy they direct, as well as trump himself, which breaks federal ethics laws. I have no issues with him tweeting, I have issues with *what* he is tweeting. And I currently rely on Medicaid and the affordable care act to survive so I will definitely have a different take on that than someone who doesn't. I fear a wait and see approach will result in the lasting destruction of social, environmental and regulatory laws & services that protect millions of people at the hands of both Trump & the republican congress.
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Just a mutually respectful conversation between friends. Definitely not my intent to have an argument of any sort.
It is debatable that Trump himself is in a position to profit from his policies. He is the principle owner of a massive global corporation. Any global corp by definition stands to win or lose depending on what policies or actions the US government takes. There's no avoiding that.
It is one thing when a person owns stock they can simply sell or transfer to a blind trust which will buy and sell stock positions without consulting the beneficiary. Then after leaving office the principle can take the portfolio back over and shouldn't have suffered any particular loss. You cannot do the same thing with an equity position in a company, especially a privately held company, and even more so with a family held company. You can't just sell that off, and you can't recreate it or buy it back after leaving office. Making it essentially impossible for anyone in that position to hold office would be hugely anti-democratic and detrimental to the country to deny that background to the possibility of good government.
As much as I understand the argument you're making on this issue, and in principle agree with it, it cannot be a black and white absolute. It must be balancing of competing interests to reach a reasonable solution. As you said, we have never had a President coming from this background/situation. The rules (which are guidelines more than rules) are not written for and frankly incapable of dealing with this situation. Yes, absolutely, there are serious conflict of interest questions, but there is no solution to comply with these rules that can work in reality with this situation. The rules have to be rewritten on the fly to create a customized situation that actually works. There will be a lot of push and pull over some time that will try to get things mostly right. A lot of that is already well underway, and I don't know that the current state of the situation is really publicly known yet - I don't know it.
As far as cabinet picks, my understanding is that's less of an issue. As an example, the former Exxon CEO will be divested and into a blind trust. At that point it doesn't matter how Exxon does cause he either doesn't own their shares or doesn't know if he does or not... which is just what the current rules say.
Trump aside, I'm not saying there are not issues with nominees, but they're really no different and no better or worse than they have been in previous administrations of both parties. Bringing on people from investment banks or hedge funds or the fed, policy folks from partisan think tanks, people with industry experience, former govt officials... that's all exactly the same as every administration does. It's rare any political party can get billionaires to set aside their work to serve in govt, but FDR did that sort of thing and we've had plenty of uber rich presidents before.
Trying to understand your situation though... You say you rely on both medicaid and ACA? Because it should be one or the other, not both. Either you have insurance or you fall so far below the income level that you qualify for medicaid. I assume you mean you are a US citizen living in the US, that you previously did not qualify for medicaid due to making too much money, are not disabled and too young to get medicare, and live within one of the 32 states that expanded medicaid, where you fall within the narrow income band that applies to. That's also known as the federal transfer money to California plan because they pushed the limits to add nearly four times as many people to medicaid as the next closest state. They did that in an unsustainable way that is bankrupting the state as the financial burden shifts over time from the federal govt to the state, and they're just hoping to be bailed out in the future from their fiscally irresponsible decision, but more likely will have to curtail benefits in line with what conservative bastions like New York, Illinois, and Michigan are doing. I don't know if you live in California or not, but you should be aware that even if Hillary had won and ACA was left untouched and fully funded, millions of people currently on medicaid would lose that coverage in the future.
To the extent you think Trump is the great satan on this issue, some of the reason I couldn't support him is I don't think he's actually a conservative. He spent his whole adult life championing liberal positions. That's what Cruz referenced with his "new york values" statement. That's a quote from a Trump interview in which he said he supports gun control and believes we should have a single payer govt run healthcare system. I don't at all believe the conservative sounding lip service he droned on about after he decided to run for president. However, you can bet that republicans do not want to fix this thing in a way that takes healthcare coverage away from people that currently have it. Can you imagine the visual that would create? The backlash they'd suffer? You can bet they'll make some changes that try to fix some of the major problems with the current law, but you should also understand that ACA is essentially the health plan Bush Sr campaigned on going up against Clinton when Hillary was pushing for single-payer US version of the NHS. ACA is essentially the republican healthcare solution that's been pushed for the last couple decades at least. It is the plan Romney implemented as Governor. What the democrats did was tweak it. I would argue they tweaked it intentionally to fail so they could then revert to single-payer, but their motivation doesn't matter as much as the result. Those real world costs have gone up unsustainable and have driven carriers out of the market leaving plans that you can't find a provider to take. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, what we have really doesn't work very well. Everyone wants everyone to have legitimate access to affordable high quality healthcare without delay. I don't know that exists under NHS either. No one wants to take healthcare away from people. They also don't want to prop up an unsustainable system designed (intentionally or not) to fail so they can take the short term credit and dump the blame on the other party forced to clean up the mess later. That's bad for the country and everyone in it, especially those like you who are counting on that care.
None of us actually have a choice but to wait and see. He is going to be President. There is no changing that by any means. He is going to execute some set of policies, for better or worse. The only choices we have are to be optimistic that things will work out for the best, as they most times do regardless of who is in office; be pessimistic, deciding in advance based on incomplete information and misinformation that the sky will fall no matter what; or, wait and see. Personally, I think wait and see is the only reasonable position. If you're going to sway one way or the other, then optimism would be better, but you're likely to be somewhat disappointed. Pessimism though doesn't do you or anyone else any good. It doesn't change what will happen. It doesn't better prepare you in case of something bad. It just doesn't help at all. So, my advice would be to listen to President Obama when he tells the country to support the next President because we want the country to be successful. Look at the core rather than the extremes. Put the emotion of the election behind you and put your faith in the country, because it is bigger than anyone and tends to take care of itself nicely regardless who holds the reigns for brief moments in time.
And sorry, that's so long. My core message is cheer up. It's not as bad as you seem to think. Let's all just give it time and see how things work out. These things have a way of working themselves out for the best most of the time.
