Besides, Trump has more important thing to do, like gutting the EPA clean air and clean water standards, as he continues to remove that last vestiges of the Obama years.

However, the current situation with COVID-19 will soon be exposing, as more and more people end-up having to be treated for the virus, even if it doesn't lead to hospitalization, the gaps that America has in the insurance coverage of the general population, particularly in those states which are NOT participating in the Medicaid expansion program, which was part of the ACA (AKA, Obamacare), most of which are states controlled by Republican legislatures and/or Governors. This is where the consequences, in terms of the aftermath of this virus, will be felt the most and where in the end, the most tax dollars will have to be spent to repair the damage, not just medical, but financial as well. Now if we had had a 100% implementation of the ACA programs for the states, or worse yet, if the ACA had actually provided for some sort of universal healthcare system, the future might have been very different.

OCU

When Alaska became a state in 1959 my father almost moved our family there (I was 12 at the time). He went so far as to look into the sort of jobs he could get there as they were looking for certain skills and trades, and since he was a heavy equipment operator and a trained diesel mechanic, he soon learned that he would have no problem getting a good job. However, something came-up, can't recall what it was, but he never followed-up. For years, my mother always talked about visiting Alaska, even after my father passed-away, she kept saying that some day she was going, if for no other reason than to see what she had missed.

Anyway, my wife and I decided that we would like to visit Alaska ourselves and so in the fall of 1999, we decided that in the Spring we would book a cruise, up the Inside Passage, to visit at least part of the state. And of course we told my mother what our plans were and that we would love for her to come with us. She lived in Michigan, but she came out to California almost every year anyway, so the plan was, she would fly out in the Spring, spend a couple of weeks or so, we would then all fly up to Vancouver, board the ship there, take the cruise, then fly back to SoCal, spend another week or so and then she'd fly back to Michigan.

So that was the plan. We didn't want to book the trip too far in advance as something might come-up so we put it off. And sure enough, something came up. Around the middle of March my mother started to feel ill and she went to the doctor who just couldn't find anything wrong but knew there was a problem and since she had really good insurance (my father had worked for the state of Michigan for 30 years and retired with great insurance that paid 100% of everything, included as part of his pension benefits) so the doctor sent he to a diagnostic medical center associated with the Mayo Clinic. Unfortunately, her condition did not improve and 10 days later she died from a very rare and hard to detect form of cancer.

After that we told ourselves that while it would have been great that have taken her with us, we were still going on that trip, so we did, in June 2000, my wife and I, and my wife's sister and her husband (they were also from Michigan), took that inside passage cruise from Vancouver up to Skagway and back.

Moral of the story; don't wait too long, it might never happen.

OCU