YOUR VIEWS
Good news, bad news
A recent study reflected the state of obesity among kids in the United States. The bad news is that 10 times more kids are obese today than 40 years ago. The good news is that, in the process, they’ve learned to type 120 words per minute using only their thumbs.
Dirk Crockett, Yukon
Single-payer on the way
President Trump’s recent executive order is intended to draw insured Americans away from the exchanges, the cornerstone of Obamacare, and get them on group insurance plans. It’s what he did following the signing ceremony that may come back to haunt him. Trump dropped a bomb he believes will crush the exchanges by terminating cost-sharing reduction, CSR, subsidies paid directly to insurance companies. CSRs were never authorized in Obamacare but paid anyway. Supposedly these CSRs helped offset premiums on the exchanges by directly subsidizing insurance companies.
Without time to implement the provisions of the presidential order before premiums must be published for 2018 and astronomical premium increases needed by terminating the CSRs, insurers will withdraw from the exchanges, resulting in the unintended consequence of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) beginning to sell insurance on the exchanges. It will be cheap and buyers will flock to the single-payer remaining on the exchange — the federal government.
Once CMS becomes the sole provider on the exchanges, the small-business provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act signed by former President Obama in December 2016 will begin the death spiral for small-business group insurance. Employers will terminate group insurance in droves, pushing employees to cheap individual CMS exchange insurance.
Trump outsmarted himself. By terminating an unauthorized subsidy, he paved the way for a single-payer system.
Randy J. Wedel, Stillwater expert in the use of funds and where they can best be used to keep a great university alive and growing. And, no one loves Oklahoma more than this workhorse.
Chuck Bowman, Edmond
More help needed
I agree completely with Sister Veronica Higgins (Your Views, Oct. 15) that we need to be concerned about and respond to the needs of those who are threatened by cuts to their services. Unfortunately, I have written on these issues of mental health accessibility, health care and cuts for senior nutrition but have failed to get any action. It’s not only on our local level, but our own U.S. senators who time after time vote to reduce health care coverage for middle class or poor people. Sister Veronica wants us to appeal to the hearts of our legislators but I have had no response from them.
Perhaps more of us need to continue this challenge and do more. I have called our senators and asked them to vote no on health care cuts but they continue to vote yes. We need another avenue or way to rally concern and support. Are there more active ways to address these needs? Are there none who are bold enough to take on this challenge? We can do more and we can do better!
It takes more of us doing what we can. Every vote, phone call or letter can make a difference. Today is the day to act, not tomorrow.
Sister Mary Ann O’Kane, Oklahoma City
Comparisons with Kansas
Oklahoma is awash in oil and gas. Our pastures are covered with fat cattle and we have wheat in abundance. Yet we are told over and over we are too poor for the state’s children to have a decent education, too poor to have decent roads, too poor for decent care of our elderly and our handicapped. Kansas also has oil and gas, cattle and wheat. It has pretty much the same oil firms as we have here. And like Oklahoma, they haven’t really diversified their economy. They do have an 8 percent oil production tax and their oil companies operate profitably. We have a 2 percent oil production tax and our state revenues are insufficient for basic services. Yet Kansas has better roads, better schools and teacher pay and better care for its elderly.
How many more oil wells do we need to drill, how much more wheat do we need to plant, and how many more head of cattle do we need to raise not to be poor? Or at least be on Kansas’ level? The way things are in Oklahoma, my guess is there is no such number. But please correct me if I’m wrong.
Mike Coppock, Enid
DWASHINGTON epending upon one’s distance from all things Twitter, recent revelations of sexual harassment in Hollywood are either the tipping point we’ve been waiting for — or just another shark attack until the next one.
If you’re former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, whose book, “Be Fierce,” was released just as Harvey Weinstein was falling from grace, we’re in the midst of a Malcolm Gladwell sequel.
And Carlson is the female version of David, who ultimately brought down Goliath — Fox News creator and CEO Roger Ailes— with a sexual harassment lawsuit that resulted in a
$20 million settlement.
She also opened the floodgates with her witness and testament, prompting strangers to stop her on the street. In the past few days, thousands of other women have taken to social media to post their own experiences of sexual harassment using the hashtag #MeToo.
“Every woman has a story,” says Carlson.
If you’re a skeptical sort, on the other hand, you may lean toward the sharkattack line of thinking. This, too, shall pass softly into history, in other words, because inevitably something else
come along to demand our attention. Given the plethora of horrors, from the Las Vegas slaughter to the California fires, how does one sustain the necessary intensity to effect the sort of systemic cultural change that Carlson and others hope for?
The skeptics would have a valid point were it not for at least one statistically significant factor and one whale of a difference from all previous uprisings.
If true, as Carlson says, that every woman has a story, then, statistically, sexual harassment in the workplace is a plague, a disaster and a psychological assault weapon. Given that women constitute half the world’s population — and that successful women mean successful families and societies — then any word or action that undermines their ability to conduct life without fear of sex-based exploitation or retribution should be considered an epidemic of opioid proportions.
Coincidentally, Donald Trump, whose presidential campaign recently was subpoenaed for records related to multiple sexual harassment allegations, is slated next week to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. The big-fish difference, meanwhile, the president. The man who famously boasted of grabbing women by their nethers sparked the Women’s March last January with his many misogynistic comments. Trump’s lawyers have requested that they be allowed to postpone responding to the subpoena until his presidency ends, but feminist attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing some of the accusers, doesn’t appear to harbor patience in her armory of legal tactics. To be continued.
When I interviewed Carlson recently, I confessed that I had always been a “guy-girl,” raised by my father in a male-centric environment and, as a professional skeptic, had often assumed that most “victims” of sexual harassment were either not tough enough, lacked a sense of humor or were stupid about guy-tude.
It turns out I was also, according to Carlson, part of the problem. Next I told her that I had never been sexually harassed, then proceeded to relate at least two incidents in my adult working life that were textbook sexual harassment. I simply hadn’t recognized them as such.
Cases such as Carlson’s were more clear-cut than mine. One incident was hands-on, but the other, a series of episodes in the early 1990s, was environmental. Strippers were brought in to our intimate public-relations office to perform for executives’ birthday parties. I was told I could stay home those days, which I did, but then the CEO would call a meeting and show a video of the striptease on a large screen while my boss and a half-dozen male colleagues laughed. It wasn’t fun or funny.
Sexual harassment doesn’t always mean a sexual advance, as Carlson pointed out. It’s about power through sexual intimidation. Surely, women have a right to live and work without this predatory threat. If enough fathers care about their daughters’ future success; if enough brothers care about their sisters’ safety; if enough women care enough about each other, then #MeToo — or #BeFierce — won’t be just another hashtag.
And as long as Trump is considered one of the greatest offenders by so many women, this moment won’t likely be just another bad day at the beach.
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP