Health insurance on the road to extinction?

About tribal tags

Regarding J.A. McDonald’s questions about tribal license tags (Your Views, June 7): I can only speak as a Cherokee citizen.I don’t know if the tribal tags of the Cherokee Nation are cheaper than Oklahoma state tags.The fee schedule is online. According to the compact with the state, some of the fee is remitted to the state. As to shopping around if they’re enrolled on more than one tribe,the Cherokee Nation will only allow one to be enrolled as Cherokee even if they have direct ancestors of another tribe.The way a couple could “shop” for the cheapest tag is if one of them is of one tribe and one is of another tribe. Then the “shopping” could be only for the two tribes the couple are enrolled in.

Dock their pay

If our state legislators have to reconvene for a special session to fix the budget mess they created, they should have to do it without pay. They didn’t do the job we pay them to do during the regular session. If a normal person goes to work and doesn’t do their job, they don’t get paid overtime to stay and do it; they get fired!

International aid equals security

Investing in international aid can provide national security and safety for the United States. While safety and security are provided by our military, they are found in our international foreign affairs policies. It sounds contradictory that international aid and investment will keep our nation safe and secure. However, that is exactly what foreign aid could do for the U.S.

A growing threat to our safety is terrorism. During the Bush administration, the National Security Strategy fostered the idea that poverty and corruption within weak nations cultivates a vulnerability to terrorist recruitment. The United States needs an international affairs budget to aid development of education and democratic training in these nations. With an increase in education and training, there are more opportunities against extremism ideals. When someone is knowledgeable, they will be less likely to fall victim to extremism ideals. When someone is literate, they read and learn for themselves and do not fall subject to the extremist teachings of hate and terrorism. By investing in this area of the federal budget, the United States is protecting its own national security.

Grow up

The recent comments by Reza Aslan, formerly of CNN, have me confused.He expressed disgust at President Trump’s use of a tragedy to promote his so called “travel ban” and proceeded to call him a name I shall not repeat here.What is the difference in the left-wing socialists using every single shooting tragedy in America to immediately promote their feelings on gun control and the banning of weapons? Not one single difference if you ask me. Furthermore, the comments by the Trump family about Kathy Griffin were spot on and greatly justified. Can you imagine if someone on the right had portrayed a like picture of Barack Obama during his tenure?It would have made the media and the liberal nation go crazy and wild.

I’m sick and tired of the liberal faction. I say grow up, respect the position of the man who is in office and go about making changes in a civil manner.

Time to retire

Regarding “Sen. Inhofe tours airports to promote FLIGHT Act” (News, June 10): With all that isoccurring inWashington,our senior senator, Jim Inhofe,is out enjoying his hobby of flying to all of the small private airports inOklahoma, engagingthoughts on how to use taxpayers’ money to modernize these small out-of-the-way airports —money that would be better spent improving our highways and streets.Our 30-yearcongressional veteran is out of touch with reality, especially with his cavalier attitudethat he expressed regarding formerFBI Director James Comey’s recent Senate testimony. It was disconcerting to seethatthe senator’sknowledge of this major incidentconfronting our presidentis no more than whathe has seen in the media. It is timefor Inhofe to retire and allow someonewitha greater interest in what is occurring in Washington represent Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate.

The moral position

Freedom of religion does not mean that a person’s boss gets to impose his religious views on his employees. Yet that is what will happen if the “draft rule” mentioned in “Trump practices the tolerance that many liberals only preach” (Our Views, June 7) is enacted. Nobody wants to force business owners (or anyone else) to use birth control. Many liberals want all women, regardless of their employer, to be able to make the free choice to use birth control or not. The Obama administration accommodation stated that employers only have to make their beliefs known, and the insurance company will pay for contraceptives with no cost to the woman or to the employer. This is financially feasible because providing contraceptive coverage is revenue-neutral compared with the cost of pregnancy care. This is also the only moral position, because employers get to make known their beliefs but don’t get to force other people to follow them.

The editorial takes the position that employers can make or influence health care decisions for women who work for them. That is not the Oklahoma Standard, and it is a violation of the religious freedom of the women who work for these employers. enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell once had passionate views about how carefully Congress should consider sweeping changes to the health care system.

“Fast-tracking a major legislative overhaul such as health care reform or a new national energy tax without the benefit of a full and transparent debate does a disservice to the American people,” McConnell said in 2009, referring to the two big issues of the moment. Democrats using such means, he added, “would make it absolutely clear they intend to carry out their plans on a purely partisan basis.”

McConnell is now trying to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act using methods completely at odds with how the law was originally brought to life seven years ago. The ACA was debated for more than a year and went through an elaborate hearing and amendment process, including some changes urged by Republicans.

By contrast, the bill Senate Republicans are writing is being held as close as the nuclear codes. In the meantime, President Trump and his administration keep providing McConnell excellent cover as their assorted outrages dominate the news and deflect attention from Capitol Hill. The wrecking squad works in the shadows knowing that if the public were given time to absorb the damage in store for millions of Americans, the pushback would be enormous.

Cleverly, Senate Republicans say their coverage-destruction bill will be better than the one Speaker Paul Ryan pushed through the House. (Trump helpfully described the House measure as “mean” during a meeting Tuesday with Republican senators.) Well, great, and a Category 4 hurricane is a bit less harrowing than a Category 5. Most of us would prefer to avoid both.

One of the so-called “improvements” that has leaked out: People will be thrown off Medicaid more slowly under McConnellcare than under Ryancare. But they’ll still be thrown off, and to pay for this reprieve, the Senate would reportedly include additional cuts to Medicaid elsewhere. To finance all their tax cuts for the rich, Republicans will have to gut insurance for a lot of people one way or another. he 1998 midterm election was a debacle for Republicans, particularly then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Since Reconstruction, no president had seen his party gain seats in the House in a midterm election six years into his presidency. Gingrich, who made the election a referendum on impeaching President Bill Clinton, resigned after the loss. Clearly, voters had sent the signal, “Don’t do it.”

The White House thought it had dodged a bullet. But one morning, over Thanksgiving break, then-White House Chief of Staff John Podesta was running in Washington’s Rock Creek Park when it hit him: GOP leaders are “not going to let their members off the hook. They’re going to beat and beat and beat on them until they vote for impeachment.”

It fell to Podesta to tell the still-celebrating White House staff that the midterms meant nothing, that the push to impeach the president in the House was a runaway train that could not be derailed.

President Trump’s White House could use a John Podesta about now. Because no one seems to have told Trump’s team that the Democrats are every bit as committed to impeaching Trump as the GOP was to impeaching Clinton. The difference, of course, is that the Democrats don’t control the House — yet.

If they did, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York rightly noted recently, impeachment proceedings would already be underway. And if the Democrats take back the House in 2018, it won’t matter to most members whether the country as a whole supports impeachment, because the voters who elected them will be in favor of it. (A recent Public Policy Polling survey found that 47 percent of Americans support impeachment while 43 percent oppose it.)

I think it would be folly to impeach the president given what we know now. But that’s meaningless. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” notwithstanding, the criteria for impeachment have little to do with criminal law and everything to do with politics. If 218 members of the House think it is right — or simply in their

Why all the secrecy? McConnell is trying to keep the pressure off the many Republican senators who have offered pledges of varying degrees of specificity to protect Medicaid and other aspects of the ACA that benefit their constituents.

Since Democrats have 48 votes against dismantling the existing law, any three Republican senators could put a stop to this fantastically anti-democratic process. They could walk into McConnell’s office and say they’ll oppose any bill that is not made public for at least a month of real scrutiny and discussion. Is this too much to ask of legislation that could threaten the health care of countless Americans (the exact number being unknowable because the bill’s architects won’t admit to what they’re doing)?

There is work here for activists, politicians and the media. Activists must understand that they have less time to save the Affordable Care Act than they might think. Democratic Senators must take every opportunity to force this issue to the fore. Disruption in the face of this violation of legislative norms is no vice.

As for the media, Jacob Leibenluft, a former Obama administration official, described the problem well in an interview: “If you don’t have hearings, and you don’t have big moments for television, you don’t have bandwidth for coverage.” Leibenluft, now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says individual reporters on the health care beat are doing good work, but their stories are getting limited attention. Leibenluft spoke before the horror of Wednesday’s shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and four others, which properly commanded the nation’s attention. His point was about the place of health care in the normal flow of political news.

He added: “I hate to think that looking back on this period, we’ll realize that the most regressive piece of social legislation in modern American history was passed, and no one was paying attention.”

We know the Trump/Russia story will still be there in a month. We cannot say the same about the health insurance millions of Americans count on. By then, it may be on the road to extinction.

WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP political interest — to impeach the president, he can be impeached. Whether twothirds of the Senate decides to remove the president from office is also an entirely political decision. Given the likely composition of the Senate after the next election, however, that remains unlikely.

Then again, who knows? Given how Trump responds to criticism and political pressure, would you want to bet that the tweeter-in-chief would be a model of statesmanlike restraint during an impeachment ordeal? So many of his current problems are the direct result of letting his ego or frustration get the better of him. What fresh troubles would he mint when faced with removal from office?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has cautioned against making the midterms a referendum on impeachment. But that is an electoral strategy, not a plan for when she gets the speaker’s gavel. And even if she declines to go straight to impeachment hearings on Day 1, a Democratic-controlled House would still be a nightmare for the White House. Any hope of passing a conservative agenda would die instantaneously. Worse, once Democrats gained the power to subpoena documents and compel testimony from members of the administration, the Hobbesian internal politics of today’s White House would look like a company picnic by comparison.

In short, the only hope for the Trump presidency is for the GOP to maintain control of the House.

According to various reports, the GOP thinks it can hold on by running “against the media” in 2018. As pathetic as that would be, it might work. A better strategy would be to actually get things done.

And the only way for that to happen is for both houses of Congress to get their act together. Voting bills out of the House may be enough to justify a Rose Garden party, but it will do little to sway voters who’ve been told for years that the GOP needs control of all three branches to do big things. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2018, but his presidency will hang in the balance.

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