W

hen I was 13, I 
slammed my thumb 
in the door of my 

mom’s blue Mini Cooper. In an 
effort to show her just 
how angry I was about 
our 
morning 
fight 

minutes before, my 
melodramatic middle-
school self got out of 
the car and slammed 
the door closed, not 
realizing 
my 
left 

thumb was in the way. 
I ended up breaking 
a bone in my thumb 
and crying in front of 
everyone at the bus stop. But, in 
a few short hours I was leaving 
the hospital post-thumb surgery, 
my left hand wrapped in bright 
pink gauze and positioned with a 
metal splint.

I am lucky. No, I am privileged. 

Not only did I grow up with a 
doctor in the family, but a family 
where having health insurance 
was never a question. Physicals, 
checkups 
and 
prescriptions 

were normal occurrences. A 
broken bone? No problem. I 
was rushed to the hospital and 
fixed at once, expenses paid, no 
issue. More than that, the rest 
of my life was just as privileged. 
I lived in a good neighborhood, 
attended a well-funded public 
school, had access to healthy 
food and parents with steady 
upper middle-class incomes. My 
experience may be similar to 
your own, but for others, good 
health and good health care is a 
different story.

As 
President-elect 
Donald 

Trump begins to fill crucial 
positions for his cabinet, he has 
spared no time in giving us a 
glimpse at his administration. 
For many, it’s like sitting in a 
waiting room at the doctor’s 
office: You aren’t sure what the 
doctor is going to say, what he’s 
going to fix or whether he’ll be 
able to fix it at all (or in Trump’s 
case, try to fix it). It’s waiting to 
see what policies will come out of 
an unpredictable presidency and 
how they will shape Americans’ 
lives. And of all the vital policies 
at risk, the Affordable Care Act 
is one that will affect millions. 
A running mantra of Trump’s 
campaign 
was 
repealing 

Obamacare. However, several 
days after winning the election, 
Trump altered his position on 
repeal, instead stating he’d keep 
some provisions of Obamacare. 
The ACA has been a highlight of 
President Barack Obama’s career 
and while its full effects are still 

to be seen, the legislation has 
dramatically lowered the number 
of uninsured in the United States. 
Republicans have long been 

against 
Obamacare, 

and now they have 
higher 
hopes 
to 

repeal it once Trump 
is sworn in. Though 
as 
a 
Republican 

president, Trump has 
his party members to 
answer to, he also has 
to answer to those 
who voted for him 
and those two groups 
prove 
to 
be 
very 

different from each other.

For the millions of Americans 

whose 
well-being 
depends 

on 
accessible 
health 
care, 

the 
possibility 
of 
repealing 

Obamacare, or devoting less 
funding 
to 
improve 
quality 

of care, is life-changing. By 
reducing 
affordability, 
you 

reduce access. Health care then 
becomes a privilege, something 
that only a handful of people 
get. Yet, health is not a privilege. 
According to the World Health 
Organization, it’s a human right. 
Health care is a provision of 
maintaining a human right. 

As many have noted, the 

biggest irony in Trump’s odyssey 
to the White House is the 
populism he ran on. Appealing to 
working-class and lower-income 
citizens, he essentially received 
votes from those who benefit 
the most from Obamacare. The 
ACA’s centerpiece is to provide 
affordable insurance to all by 
requiring 
Americans 
to 
get 

insured 
and 
simultaneously 

reducing 
adverse 
selection, 

which drives up insurance costs. 
Obamacare 
especially 
targets 

those who may not get insured 
otherwise due to socioeconomic 
status 
and 
insufficient 
or 

expensive 
employee 
benefits. 

In addition, widespread health 
coverage is a way to reduce 
disparities 
in 
health. 
Those 

who cannot afford to be insured 
and thus maintain good health 
suffer 
economically. 
Health 

is not a mutually exclusive 
component in our lives. Your 
health affects economic, social 
and emotional well-being. Thus, 
good population health not only 
benefits the productivity of an 
individual but of the nation.

The irony of Trump continues. 

The segment of society that 
gains the most from affordable 
health care is also the group that 
voted for a man with plans and 
an expectation from his party 

to repeal it or at the minimum 
reduce it. The New York Times 
highlighted this political paradox 
in a story on a woman who voted 
for Trump and the next week 
went to sign up for another year 
of Obamacare.

We’re in the waiting room now. 

We don’t know what path Trump 
will take on health care. His 
change from campaign to office 
leaves too much uncertainty. 
But, with a Republican majority 
in Congress, and the recent 
nomination of Obamacare critic 
Tom Price to the Department 
of Health and Human Services, 
reform is on the horizon.

At this point, we have the 

lowest 
rate 
of 
uninsured 

Americans in the last 50 years. 
Obamacare has made enormous 
strides in making health care 
more of a right than a privilege. 
In a Reuters poll, Americans 
viewed health care as the most 
pressing issue to be addressed 
by the new presidency. Yet, 
health care is only one aspect 
in the greater issue of health. 
Health care is a means to solving 
health disparities and improving 
population health, but it is not the 
singular solution. The root cause 
of health disparities between 
Americans doesn’t come from 
a lack of health care, but rather 
the social, economic and cultural 
structures Americans live in 
every day.

When it comes to health policy, 

the United States is an anomaly. 
We spend more money than most 
other developed countries on 
health care, but still exhibit lower 
life expectancy and worsening 
health outcomes. It’s a paradox — 
a paradox of our own doing.

I don’t believe we can depend 

on the Trump administration to 
approach health policy in a new 
way by putting more money into 
social services. However, these 
social roots of health disparities, 
lack of education and, most 
importantly, 
inequality 

in 
economic 
stability 
and 

employment, are problems that 
have been experienced by many 
of his supporters. Therefore, 
Trump 
could 
benefit 
from 

taking an alternate approach 
to health policy and working to 
mend the social factors that lead 
to health inequity by making 
good health a right and not a 
privilege for those millions who 
voted for him.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, December 1, 2016

The future of health policy

Rational vs. wishful thinking

JINHUI CHEN | OP-ED

A

s 
a 
graduate 
of 
the 

University of Michigan, I 
have been paying extreme 

attention to the 2016 presidential 
campaign. My change from being a 
Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008 
to a Donald Trump supporter in 
2016 isn’t typical. I barely knew 
about Trump after he declared 
he would run for president. In 
the very beginning, I treated him 
and his behavior like a joke — this 
guy was so funny as a billionaire 
businessman. Like most people, 
the information I knew was from 
the mainstream media. I didn’t 
believe he could win the election, 
and his speaking style was quite 
entertaining if you didn’t take 
what he’s saying seriously. 

But things changed gradually. 

When the news outlets reported 
more about Trump, not in a 
positive way, I began to feel a 
little skeptical: Is he as bad as 
the media reports? I decided to 
do my own research by using the 
powerful Google search engine 
(thank you, Larry Page, you are 
wonderful) and listening to his 
speeches. I found out Trump 
wasn’t the exact image that the 
mainstream media painted.

What’s going on with that? 

He did say some quite politically 
incorrect 
things, 
but 
the 

mainstream media had a political 
agenda aligned with Clinton’s 
campaign 
strategy, 
spinning 

everything Trump said without 
context and even reversing his 
meanings — it was really like an 
American version of the Cultural 
Revolution — by labeling him to 
be “racist, sexist, homophobic, 
xenophobic, 
Islamophobic” 

while 
Clinton 
labeled 
his 

community of supporters as a 

“basket of deplorables.”

Unlike Clinton, who was busy 

meeting her big donors, Trump 
held rallies, one after another, 
and he really cared about the 
real challenges of this country. 
He came to hold rallies seven 
times in total in Arizona, and I 
attended three of them, including 
his rally for the primary election 
at 
Fountain 
Hills. 
Trump’s 

policies are all on his campaign 
website. I don’t have to agree 
with everything he said and 
indeed, I took an iSideWith test 
and only got 56 percent match 
with Trump and 36 percent with 
Clinton. I listened to many of his 
talks from different rallies and he 
knew what the American people 
really need and want to change. 
Unfortunately, his real voice was 
spun by the mainstream media 
and further incited by more 
misleading 
information. 
Race 

card, gender card, religious card 
became the tools to smear Trump 
and his supporters.

I don’t have to be a conservative 

or a liberal, but a neutral resident 
watching this great election. 
I wanted to learn something 
in this election, so I needed to 
keep reading and analyzing the 
information 
I 
received 
from 

the internet (not from TV). As a 
result, I predicted that Trump 
would win 324 Electoral College 
votes 
including 
the 
critical 

votes from swing states: 16 from 
Michigan, 10 from Wisconsin, 
20 from Pennsylvania, 29 from 
Florida and 18 from Ohio, but I 
was wrong on Colorado, Nevada 
and New Hampshire and 1 vote 
from a district in Maine. 

How could Trump win in a 

landslide? He really listened to 
the voters and the voters listened 
to him, too, and gave him a trust 
vote. But, where was Clinton? 

Even 
though 
Trump 
won 

the election, the media keeps 
misleading 
many 
Clinton 

supporters who have been long 
brainwashed by the media to 
believe 
that 
their 
candidate 

would never lose. They couldn’t 
believe their long hope resulted 
in nothing. They couldn’t accept 
a result contrary to the belief they 
held onto for so long. Protests, 
riots, emotional ventilations and 
the like are the only way they could 
express their disappointments. 
Nonetheless, could they step out 
of the box, their comfort zone, and 
empathize why so many people 
support Trump?

It’s quite pathetic to note after 

eight years of President Barack 
Obama’s 
administration, 
the 

law and order, racial tension 
and gender discrimination and 
many other conflicts are messed 
up. But how could you blame a 
presidential candidate, and now 
president-elect, for Obama’s toxic 
presidential leadership and the 
mainstream media’s faults? Now 
you are on the left side, and we 
are on the right side. Should you 
and I start a fight? What does 
democracy mean in this election? 
Since Clinton couldn’t win the 
election, please blame her for her 
own faults. If you want to win, 
please be prepared for the next 
election in four years. Attend 
rallies early, rather than protest 
or riot after, when you are too late.

In the end, right now, win 

or loss, this election provides a 
lesson everyone can learn from. It 
isn’t about “we won, you lost,” it’s 
about putting America first and 
how to make America great again.

LAURA SCHINAGLE

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

SHOHAM GEVA

Editor in Chief

CLAIRE BRYAN 

and REGAN DETWILER 

Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

Carolyn Ayaub
Claire Bryan

Regan Detwiler
Brett Graham
Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan

Ben Keller
Minsoo Kim

Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy 

Jason Rowland

Ali Safawi

Kevin Sweitzer

Rebecca Tarnopol

Ashley Tjhung

Stephanie Trierweiler

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

A/PIA Studies crucial to diversity 

MICHELLE LIN-LUSE | OP-ED

A

s Asian/Pacific Islander 
American students and 
alumni of the University 

of Michigan, we are called to 
action as we witness everything 
we love about our campus and 
nation coming under assault. We 
are moved to join with and help 
lead the majority of Wolverines 
and Americans who say “no” to 
racism, 
misogyny, 
xenophobia, 

homophobia, transphobia, religious 
intolerance, ableism and bigotry 
of all kinds. “Go Blue” must be a 
rallying cry for democracy, for 
social justice and for science and 
education in the public interest.

We have seen a presidential 

campaign 
motivated 
by 

scapegoating, hatred and revenge 
manifest on our campus, as well as 
a campaign of domestic terrorism 
through white supremacist posters 
in our communities. While there 
are new threats we must name and 
confront, we must not forget that 
our fight against racist ignorance 
and attacks on campus, in Ann 
Arbor and in the United States goes 
back decades. Those in power have 
never guaranteed safe spaces for our 
communities. We are the ones who 
have fought and organized to create 
our own spaces of consciousness, 
liberation and solidarity.

That is why we need Asian/

Pacific Islander American Studies 
now more than ever. A/PIA Studies 
and Ethnic Studies were born out 
of the struggle against global and 
domestic warfare and oppression, 
when student activists demanded a 
relevant education that overturned 
Eurocentric biases and reflected the 
diverse perspectives and concerns 
of our communities. We are a 
product of that struggle, and no 
analysis of racism, intersectionality 
or social justice would be possible 
today without it.

When 
full-time 
faculty 

and employment and student 
involvement peaked in A/PIA 
Studies at the University, we were 
part of a nationally renowned 
program offering a wide range of 
courses addressing race and justice. 
We had engaged faculty whose 
activities extended far beyond the 
classroom and whose mentoring 
served our organizations and 
programs on nights and weekends. 
Though A/PIA Studies had limited 
resources, no office space and no 
staff, we worked with these faculty 
to build cultural and educational 
programs, including large-scale 
events such as the Out of the 
Margins 
activism 
conference, 

which drew hundreds of attendees 
from diverse backgrounds to 

address the social issues that 
impact us and the entire nation.

We had the incredible honor 

to learn from and work with 
community 
leaders, 
including 

legendary scholar-activist Grace 
Lee Boggs. Boggs taught us, 
“You cannot change any society 
unless you take responsibility 
for it, unless you see yourself as 
belonging to it, and responsible 
for changing it.” Education has 
been our foundation, as we have 
become socially conscious alumni, 
community organizers, educators, 
policy-makers, 
professionals, 

attorneys, health care providers, 
parents and much more.

We want and need for today’s 

students to benefit from A/PIA 
Studies in the ways that we were 
able to when we were in school. 
Since 2013, A/PIA Studies has 
been reduced to a shadow of its 
former self because of top-down 
decisions by administrators lacking 
proper knowledge and expertise 
to appreciate the program’s value 
and potential. The most dedicated 
faculty have been fired or pushed 
away. The classes and programs 
we built up have disappeared. 
Because of this, the climate for A/
PIA students and many students 
at the University has become less 
inclusive and more hostile. Our 
efforts to get answers and provide 
support for rebuilding the program 
have been tokenized and ignored.

The A/PIA Studies program 

was once a social justice leader on 
campus. Its professors were always 
at the forefront of organizing teach-
ins in response to national crises, 
supporting student organizations, 
advocating for students of color, 
defending survivors of hate crimes 
and sexual assault and holding the 
administration accountable to its 
diversity promises. Our campus 
and our nation need a renewal of 
that vital presence.

We are encouraged to see the 

LSA’s October 2016 Diversity, 
Equity 
& 
Inclusion 
Strategic 

Plan finally recognize that past 
leadership failures have made 
students, staff and faculty feel 
“isolated 
and 
disrespected 

based on their social identities” 
and 
suffer 
“depression 
and 

stigmatization 
resulting 
from 

a lack of understanding and 
compassion.” LSA has specifically 
acknowledged that “Asian and 
Asian-American faculty, students, 
and staff have felt left out of the 
conversation altogether.”

But 
we’ve 
already 
heard 

countless 
promises 
about 

diversity, equity and inclusion 
from leadership. This time must 
be different. LSA’s Strategic Plan 
does not in any way name how its 

prior missteps undermined A/PIA 
Studies, and its “36 Strategic Goals” 
do not commit to any positive 
steps to rebuild and promote the 
program. Three years of slow 
progress, inadequate measures and 
a lack of transparency are too much.

LSA and the University must 

recognize 
the 
incredible 
past 

accomplishments of A/PIA Studies 
and make it a cornerstone of the 
campaign for diversity, equity 
and inclusion. The University 
has the power within its grasp to 
restore national leadership in the 
field of A/PIA Studies. We call 
on students, alumni, faculty, staff 
and off-campus supporters from 
all backgrounds to embrace the 
following proposals. We commit 
ourselves not only to implementing 
these steps, but also to working 
with everyone struggling to move 
diversity, equity and inclusion from 
the realm of rhetoric to reality.

We call for the full restoration of 

the eight full-time faculty in A/PIA 
Studies who have been lost since 
2008, including the restoration of 
the courses, scholarly expertise and 
student mentoring that has been lost. 
We call for the University to meet 
the demand for staff, funding and 
physical space that students, faculty 
and staff deem necessary to fulfill 
the curricular and co-curricular 
needs of A/PIA Studies and related 
A/PIA cultural programming and 
activities. We call for a restoration 
of direct involvement by students, 
alumni, staff and community 
allies in setting priorities, decision 
making and governance of the 
A/PIA Studies program. We call 
for institutional structures that 
ensure the A/PIA Studies program 
has the autonomy to be led by its 
own stakeholders who are central 
to the work of the program and 
possess the expertise needed to 
promote its success.

We can never again allow A/

PIA Studies to be undermined 
by short-sighted administrators 
or department chairs who lack 
the best interests of the program. 
We call for the formation of a 
commission of external Asian 
American and Pacific Islander 
Studies 
experts 
to 
identify 

additional steps the University 
must take to become “the Leaders 
and the Best” in Asian American 
and 
Pacific 
Islander 
Studies. 

This commission must outline 
a pathway for A/PIA Studies to 
achieve departmental status.

University alumni for A/PIA studies

ANU ROY-CHAUDHURTY | COLUMN

Anu Roy-Chaudhury can be reached 

at anuroy@umich.edu.

ANU ROY-

CHAUDHURTY

MICHELLE LIN-LUSE

EMILY WOLFE | CONTACT EMILY AT ELWOLFE@UMICH.EDU

Jinhui Chen, Ph.D.

Rackham alum, ‘09

Read the full list of signatures at

michigandaily.com

“Two Lives”

JINHUI CHEN

