Electoral College – I’ve always thought the EC is a bizzare system. Unless you’re a swing state no politicians will pay attention to your concerns on a national level.
The EC at least should change to proportional representation of the vote instead of winner take all within each state. Maine and Nebraska already do this.
And speaking of gaming the system technically the EC is individuals selected to represent the voters and they can vote how they want so how can you ensure there won’t be a repeat of the fake electors scheme from Jan 6 with the EC system which allows for faithless electors who are not necessarily bound to vote in a way that reflects the results of the vote?
Technically part of the design was to prevent someone like Trump attaining office in the first place by allowing a mechansim for the political class elites to overrule the will of the voters, “Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified but with a talent for “low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” attaining high office.”
ACA – in order for some people to pay less others had to pay more. In this case healthy people who in the past might not have purchased insurance or had inexpensive plans now subsidize the care others receive thus reversing adverse selection. They won’t always be healthy so just as we pay into all insurances for the time it will help us, we contribute to a system when we don’t need it in anticipation of a time we will.
While I don’t disagree with the idea of implementing it first on a state basis, there were other considerations here. Our system is a hybrid hodge podge of national public (Medicare/Medicaid/VA) and state level private insurance policies. They were trying for a national public option but that never materialized. Also asking those who are ill to just wait a few years maybe a decade for assistance while a few other states test drive a new system is not ideal either. Insurers prefered that the pool of healthy individuals joining was as large as possible to help offset the new mandates of covering preexisting conditions and ending lifetime limits etc. States with smaller populations would likely have struggled with this.
Overall our medical insurance system and medical care systems both still need tremendous structural changes but the ACA allowed for increasing the accessibility of medical care for broad segments of the population which in my opinion is a good thing. I would suggest the best path forward is one national public plan like Medicare that covers all universally funded through taxes and then individuals who choose to can purchase additional supplement plans themselves or have those provided through their employer which would also help relieve the burden on businesses of covering medical costs for their employees. The medical care system itself needs such an extreme overhaul at this point it’s almost better to start from scratch.
3rd party candidates – if the election is Trump vs Biden the 3rd party candidates will come out of the woodwork. One of them might even win!