Tag Archives: ACA

local news

‘Town hall meetings are great … ‘

I want to discuss a brief, concise and pithy message that popped into my Twitter feed this morning.

It comes from my state senator, Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican. It says: “Town Hall meetings are a great way to report to and interact with the public we serve. I’ve had 374. At least 37 planned for Q3 2017.”

Bear with me as I parse this statement for just a moment.

Town hall meetings have become something of a story in the past few days as members of Congress have taken their post-Presidents Day break, returned home — in many instances — to meet with their bosses.

They’ve discovered that the folks back home are none too happy with them. They don’t want their “employees,” those members of Congress, to mess with the Affordable Care Act.

Some members of Congress — such as Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon — have decided to skip the town hall meetings altogether.

Thornberry is meeting instead with local business leaders, trying to assess the impact of federal regulations on their businesses. One of those leaders told me this week the discussion dealt with the difficulty of the rules handed down by the Obama administration and that Thornberry has given them assurances that he would work to loosen government’s regulatory reins.

Thornberry’s Amarillo meeting was a friendly event. I know … it’s shocking, shocking.

It’s fair to wonder if state Sen. Seliger would believe so strongly in the value of town hall meetings if he were forced to face down the beast that’s been awakened by the Republican-controlled Congress’s desire to repeal something that folks need.

Yes, Kel, these events “are a great to  way interact with the people we serve,” which brings me to another critical point.

These government officials do work for us, you and me. Whether we cast our votes for them or for someone else, they answer to us. We pay their salaries, provide them with their staff, pay for their public transportation, their stationery, their telecommunications devices; I almost wrote “typewriters,” then remembered that we don’t use typewriters any longer.

To that end, it is important to remind these individuals of that indisputable, irrefutable fact. The crowds at these town meetings across the land — in “red” and “blue” congressional districts alike — are doing that very thing. Good for them!

local news, political news

No ‘town hall’ meetings; no surprise

I guess this is one of the least-surprising things I’ve heard since Donald J. Trump became president of the United States.

West Texas’s congressional delegation is coming home for a weeklong recess — but none of them is planning any town hall meetings with constituents.

Why do you suppose they’re forgoing these events? My guess — and that’s all it is — would be that they might not ready to withstand the heat that their colleagues have gotten from their constituents when they have had town meetings back home.

U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, who has represented the 13th Congressional District since 1995, says he’ll be accessible to voters. Good. I trust he’ll keep his word while he’s back home.

The issue on voters’ minds happens to be the Affordable Care Act. Congressmen and women have been getting a snoot full from constituents about the ACA and what Congress intends to do if it repeals it. They don’t want to lose their health insurance and, near as I can tell, Republicans lack a replacement plan to insert in place of the ACA if they get around to repealing it.

But our West Texas congressional representatives aren’t going to hear from their constituents in a town hall setting.

I hope, though, that they open and read their mail and their staffers listen to phone calls from concerned citizens.

We aren’t brain dead in this part of the country. Indeed, lawmakers representing deep-red, solidly Republican congressional districts are getting their share of gripes.

I doubt we’re any different here.

medical news, national news, political news

Obamacare repeal effort losing steam?

Some chatter is beginning to develop that suggests efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act might be subsiding among congressional Republicans.

A New York Times story lays out what appears to be an interesting scenario. It is that with President Barack Obama now out of power, the repeal-and-replace effort is being replaced by suggestions of tinkering around the edges of the ACA.

What gives?

It appears to me that the issue among House and Senate Republicans might have had more to do with the man who crafted the legislation than the legislation itself.

It’s not an unreasonable view.

ACA also is known as Obamacare, which has been a whipping boy for Republicans and other critics of the former president’s signature domestic policy initiative. Donald J. Trump has called for repeal and replacement of the ACA, calling the insurance plan a “disaster” for the country.

But … is it?

Twenty million Americans now have health insurance who didn’t have it before. Why? They couldn’t afford it prior to enactment of the ACA.

Then we’ve had those town hall meetings across the country. Citizens have been flooding meeting halls and shouting down members of Congress with demands to keep their hands off the ACA out of fear they would lose health insurance coverage.

There might be signs of lawmakers getting spooked by the anger they’re hearing out here among their constituents. Lawmakers also are finding out that crafting a replacement law is far more complicated than simply scrapping the old one. Go figure.

As the Times notes, Obama’s absence from the public stage now has turned attention to potential solutions. According to the Times: “But with President Barack Obama out of office, the debate over ‘Obamacare’ is becoming less about “Obama” and more about ‘care’ — greatly complicating the issue for Republican lawmakers.”

Republicans have had nearly eight years to come up with a replacement plan. However, for virtually the entire length of the Obama presidency, they’ve been hung up on repealing legislation that has the name of the man they detest.

Now they’re learning about the difficulty of replacing it.

local news, medical news, national news

Now, those are ‘town hall meetings’

Town hall meetings usually are love fests, at least that’s what transpires when state legislators convene them in the Texas Panhandle.

State Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, quite often stages these sessions in communities throughout his sprawling West Texas district. As near as I can tell, they are civil, usually friendly and constituents spend a good bit of energy telling Seliger how much they appreciate his service.

Well, town hall meetings in many congressional districts have turned into something quite different in recent days. They have produced shouting matches between members of Congress and their constituents.

At issue? The Affordable Care Act.

Constituents are showing up in droves to tell their congresspeople to leave the ACA alone. Or, if they’re going to repeal it, they’d damn well better have something to replace it … as in immediately, if not sooner!

U.S. Rep. Gus Billirakis, R-Fla., got a snootful from his constituents, who told him they’d better not mess with “Obamacare.” He’s not alone. Someone uttered the term “death panel” during a town hall event and promptly got booed and shouted down.

I haven’t heard about any such encounters in my congressional district, which would be the 13th, covering the Texas Panhandle. Our member of Congress is a fellow named Mac Thornberry, a Clarendon Republican, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, a rancher and a self-proclaimed “recovering lawyer.” He has served in the House for 22 years, making him one of the big dogs of Capitol Hill.

Thornberry hasn’t said much in public — above a whisper — about how he would replace the ACA.

Town hall meetings, as I have long understood them, were meant for constituents to speak their minds freely, telling their elected representatives what they think about issues of the day and how their representatives are handling them. The bad comes with the good. Town hall meetings aren’t usually intended to be amen choruses.

Thus, the real deal has broken out in congressional districts across the land.

It’s beginning to sound as though Congress has just discovered a so-called new “third rail.” It used to be that you didn’t mess with Social Security. These days, with 20 million Americans insured through a new government-sponsored insurance program, the third rail might have switched.

Now it’s the Affordable Care Act … maybe.

legal news, national news, political news

Hold on! Court balance won’t change

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All this hyperventilating over Donald Trump’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court is making me dizzy.

The president tonight brought out Neil Gorsuch, a judge on the 10th Circuit of Appeals, as his nominee for the nation’s highest court.

He’s a conservative, just as Trump promised. He is a “strict constitutional constructionist,” again as Trump vowed. He’s also a disciple of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, as Trump pledged.

Now we’re hearing talk about the “nuclear option” that Senate Democrats might employ to stop Gorsuch’s confirmation. They’ll oppose this fellow, seemingly as payback for the shabby treatment Senate Republicans leveled against President Obama’s choice to succeed Obama. Remember that? Senate GOPers said within hours of Scalia’s death that they would block anyone the president nominated. Obama selected Merrick Garland and the Senate didn’t even give him a hearing and a vote.

Let’s take a deep breath here.

I want to make a couple of points.

One, I detest the notion of Donald Trump nominating anyone to the court. But he won the presidency without my vote. He won enough electoral votes to take the oath of office. Thus, he earned the right to choose anyone he wants.

Gorsuch isn’t my kind of justice. But someone else is the president.

Two, the ideological balance of the U.S. Supreme Court is not going to change when — or if — Gorsuch is confirmed. Scalia was a conservative icon. He was a heroic figure among political conservatives. Placing another judicial conservative on the high court restores the court’s narrow 5-4 conservative bent.

I feel compelled to note that the court — with that narrow conservative majority — made two decisions that riled conservatives, um, bigly. It upheld the Affordable Care Act and it declared same-sex marriage to be legal under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Would a Justice Gorsuch change that equation? I don’t see it. A nominee to succeed, say, one of the liberals on the court would most assuredly prompt a titanic political battle … as it should.

None of this will matter, of course, to Senate Democrats who are enraged at the president over many — seemingly countless — issues. His behavior in the first 10 days of his presidency, culminating with his firing of an acting attorney general over her refusal to defend Trump’s paranoid refugee ban, has angered Democrats to their core.

Thus, the fight is on.

It pains me to acknowledge it, but I must. Donald Trump vowed to nominate someone from a list of 20 or so jurists he revealed during his campaign. He has delivered on his pledge.

Judge Gorsuch isn’t to my liking. Moreover, my candidate lost. The other guy won. As they say, elections do have consequences.

national news

So much for unity at this inaugural

I have a message to the new president of the United States, if only he receives it.

The campaign is over, Donald John Trump. You won. You’re the president. You promised to unify the country. You could have started when you delivered the inaugural speech. Sadly — in my mind — you didn’t.

What the country heard from the president was a recitation of the themes that won over enough voters to elect him president.

He painted yet again a dark, forbidding portrait of the greatest nation the world has ever known. He talked about job losses, a dispirited military establishment, fear of radical Islamic terrorists, a general feeling that the nation has gone to hell in a hurry.

This wasn’t your typical inaugural speech. It contained little of the high-minded hope that presidents bring to their high office.

Here is the speech in its entirety. Take a look and judge for yourself:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/full-speech-president-donald-trump-inaugural-address/ar-AAm3VY0

Believe it or not, I was hoping there would be at least a glimmer of recognition of the progress that President Barack Obama made during his eight years in office: dramatic reduction in the jobless rate; revival of the auto industry; huge reduction in the annual federal budget deficit; success in the war against terrorists — including the killing of Osama bin Laden.

None of that came forward.

Interestingly as well was the lack of mention of the dreaded Affordable Care Act, which Trump has vowed to “repeal and replace.” Nor was there a mention of the Iranian nuclear deal that Obama negotiated to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

He talked instead of restoring jobs, bringing back manufacturing jobs. Here’s a news flash, Mr. President: Those jobs fell victim to automation, not poorly negotiated trade deals; good luck if you think manufacturers are going to forgo robots for human beings.

I’m going to wish the president well — believe it or not. If he succeeds in all that he wants, more power to him, and to the country he now leads.

Failure, as the saying goes, is not an option.

If only he could have lifted our spirits just a little bit.

medical news, national news, political news

Why not just repair Obamacare?

All this talk about repealing the Affordable Care Act seems to ignore a possible alternative that’s been done already with other landmark legislation.

Congressional Republicans have been adamant about getting rid of the ACA. They’ve had six years to find a replacement mechanism to provide health insurance to Americans who cannot afford it otherwise. They have failed. They’ve come up with … nothing!

The alternative to flat-out repeal is to repair the ACA.

Congress enacted Medicare in 1965 to provide medical insurance to elderly Americans. It wasn’t perfect, either. Congress and President Johnson got together to tinker with it, to fine-tune it, to make it better. The same can be said of what Congress and other president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, did with Social Security when they created that program in 1935.

Reasonable minds can come together to make landmark laws better. It’s been done. Why not now?

Well, my theory is that it’s because the ACA has President Obama’s name on it. It’s been called Obamacare chiefly by those who use that term as a pejorative. They don’t like something that carries the name of a president who House and Senate Republicans have opposed since the beginning of his time in the White House.

I get that the ACA isn’t perfect. I understand that premiums have increased, that health insurance companies are bailing out, that consumers are having trouble finding doctors who will treat those covered by insurance provided by the ACA.

Aren’t there reasonable solutions to fix these problems? Can’t the ACA opponents huddle with those in Congress who support the plan to repair the law?

Oh, no! They’ve got to toss the ACA into the trash heap. They want to declare victory by calling it a “monumental failure,” a “disaster,” a “terrible idea.”

Twenty million Americans have health insurance today who didn’t have it before the ACA became law in 2010. Congressional Republicans are quite sure they can repeal the ACA. Finding a replacement is a bit more of a hurdle.

They have precedent, though, for seeking ways to repair what many folks believe is a flawed idea.

Compromise, folks! That’s how you govern effectively. You either have Americans’ interests at heart, or you are thinking only of your own political futures.

medical news

House prepares to burn Obamacare to the ground

I told you I would say something good about Donald J. Trump when the opportunity presents itself.

It just has.

The president-elect has admonished Republican members of Congress about whether they should repeal the Affordable Care Act without having a replacement law ready to go.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-house-republicans-to-vote-on-obamacare-repeal/ar-AAlQhoT?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

According to Reuters: “The president-elect, who takes office on Jan. 20, pressed lawmakers this week to repeal and replace it ‘essentially simultaneously.'”

Yes, Trump has applauded House members’ swift action to repeal the ACA. He’s also been mindful of the consequences of peeling away health insurance for 20 million Americans who have purchased coverage under the ACA.

It’s not as if congressional Republicans haven’t had time to cobble together a replacement plan. For six years, since the ACA was approved, the GOP has been harping and carping about the need to replace it — with something! House Republicans filed a lawsuit to repeal the ACA. They wrung their hands and griped out loud continually about an insurance law that was patterned — interestingly enough — after a Massachusetts law endorsed and pushed by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney.

House repeal doesn’t spell the end of the ACA. The repeal effort still has to jump through the Senate hoops, too.

However, the president-elect’s insistence that Congress have a replacement plan ready to go “simultaneously” is the more reasonable and humane approach.

medical news, national news, political news

GOP set to repeal … but what about the ‘replace’ part?

It’s not like the Republican Party’s members of Congress haven’t had time. They’ve had six whole years to consider how they would replace the Affordable Care Act if they ever got the chance to repeal the law.

They seem set on the repeal part of the ACA. What, though, is taking them so long to come up with the replacement?

The ACA — aka Obamacare — is President Obama’s signature domestic achievement. He’s no doubt going to speak highly of it when he bids the nation farewell in just a little while.

The ACA has enabled about 20 million Americans to obtain health insurance. Has it been “affordable,” as the president pitched it? Not entirely. Premiums have gone up; medical plans have had trouble marrying up doctors and health insurance companies.

It is not, as the GOP has maintained for the past six years, a “disaster.” They seem to dislike it mainly because a Democratic president came up with the idea of providing insurance for uninsured Americans.

But hey! He got the idea from Massachusetts, which had a Republican governor — a guy named Mitt Romney — that had developed a nearly identical plan. Obama copied Romney’s plan, more or less, and adapted to the national model.

What’s more the president himself has said that he would have been willing to accept an alternative if it did a better job than the ACA. Republicans, though, aren’t ready to provide an alternative.

What in the world has taken them so long? Are they content only to bitch and moan for the sake of political expediency without giving serious thought and discussion to how they would replace the ACA?

They’ve got the repeal part down pat. How about giving us something with which to replace it? If they intend to govern, they need to flesh out the details of how their ideas on health care are better than what we have.

national news

Obama prepares to bid us farewell; I will miss him

President Barack H. Obama is getting ready to bid a nation he led farewell.

It will occur on Jan. 10. He’ll deliver a speech in his hometown of Chicago. What do you suppose he will say?

Let’s dispense with the obvious: He’ll talk about the economic crisis he inherited, and from which his policies helped save the nation from collapse; he’ll tell us about providing health insurance to 20 million Americans; he will remind us of how we managed to kill Osama bin Laden; he will tell us of a shrinking annual budget deficit and diminishing unemployment rate.

I am going to miss this man’s style, grace, his commanding presence and the hope he continues to instill in millions of my fellow Americans.

Has it been a hiccup-free presidency over the past years? Of course not. The so-called “JV team” known as the Islamic State has become a top-drawer international enemy; Russia has re-emerged as a global threat; we’re still at war against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But I am not going to declare that this man has been a “failed president.” I am confident that history will judge him quite differently than that. It likely will judge him as a consequential president, if not a great one.

I hope he doesn’t forgo a statement during his farewell speech that reminds us of the obstruction that occurred almost from the very beginning of his presidency. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell (in)famously told us in 2009 that his “No. 1 priority” would be to make Barack Obama a “one-term president.”

Republicans fought the Democratic president at every step. One of them shouted from the congressional gallery during a State of the Union speech that “You lie!” when he said that undocumented immigrants wouldn’t benefit from the Affordable Care Act. When do you recall such utter disrespect being demonstrated against any president? Never, right?

Barack Obama is going to give way to Donald J. Trump on Jan. 20. I am going to do my level best to keep a civil tongue in my mouth and refrain from ad hominem personal attacks against the new president.

I will continue to support the man for whom I voted twice for president. He shouldn’t disappear from the public stage. I do hope, though, he shows the restraint that his immediate predecessor — George W. Bush — has exhibited while his successor takes the reins of power.

In the meantime, I am looking forward with decidedly mixed feelings about his farewell speech to a nation that well might miss his presence on the national stage.