Author: Michael A. Ventrella

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Top Four Reasons why we should have “Medicare for all”

1.  It will cut bureaucracy.  Right now we have a gigantic book full of regulations concerning Obamacare, and the Republicans want to destroy most of them and insert their own, and you know what? We already have all the regulations and bureaucracy in place for Medicare that has been tested for over fifty years. It’s not perfect (nothing in government or business or education or anything is perfect) but it sure is easier to deal with.

2.  It will get rid of mandatory insurance. Right now, insurance companies provide no health care. They’re a middle man standing between you and health care. Oh sure, if you want to buy extra health care to cover elective surgery or other things, you can do that now with medicare. But if we get rid of the need for health insurance companies, we can cut our health care costs tremendously, like every other industrialized country has done.

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3. It will lower costs. That’s how health care works, after all. If we spread the costs out among 350 million people or so (as opposed to the way we spread them out among much smaller insurance groups today), then we’ll reduce the average expenditure per person.

4. It will save everyone money. Right now, you’re either paying for insurance on your own (which is expensive) or your employer is paying for it. If it is government-provided, those costs will go away. Your employer should increase your salary accordingly (and you should demand as such — after all, they think that’s what you’re worth). Even if your taxes increase (and they don’t have to — we have the money, we’re just wasting it on things we don’t need like tax breaks for billionaires), they won’t increase as much as your insurance premiums are.

The fact is that this is the easiest, cheapest, and best way to provide health insurance to Americans.

(Note: Unlike Donald Trump, I know that health care is a complicated issue. This article is a very stripped down simple summary and does not cover every nuance, nor is it trying to.)

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Editorial cartoon: Trump “care”

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Stuart Carlson

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Why saying “I’ll pray for you” is insulting to non-believers

Look, I know you mean well. I know that no insult is intended. But try to look at this objectively:

Saying “I’ll pray for you” because I don’t believe in the same thing you believe in has the same affect on me as if you said, “I’ll ask My Little Pony to give you sweet dreams and chocolate.” It’s meaningless to me.

The reason it’s insulting is because what it really says is, “I pity you because you don’t share my beliefs, and therefore since I am superior to you, I will grant you this boon, you poor unfortunate soul. Thanks to me praying for you, you may escape an internal torment in Hell, you evil person. You should thank me.”9459f74d551d0038ee0551450f4099b00b42a91ad1f7dfec24adf03c6cbbf2df
In other words, the only person such a statement serves in this context is you. While you mean well, it ignores my beliefs completely, telling me that you’re completely insensitive to them. 

Someone saying “I’ll pray for you” as soon they find out I’m a non-believer is equivalent to me saying “I hope you get smarter” when someone tells me they do believe. It’s condescending and insulting to your belief, because it completely discounts it and treats it as meaningless and beneath respect.

I will gladly debate religion with anyone, but let’s not start off by insulting each other for our beliefs. 

“I’ll pray for you” also depends on the context. If you’re saying that because I’m in the hospital, then I know it means “I am wishing you well” and I am happy to receive such thoughts. I take no offense, because it means you care. But when you say it in response to learning I don’t share your beliefs, it’s dismissive and insulting.

 

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Editorial cartoon: Pre-existing condition

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David Horsey

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Who Supports the GOP Health Care Bill?

GROUPS THAT OPPOSE THE GOP HEALTH CARE PLAN:

  • AARP
  • America’s Essential Hospitals
  • American Academy of Pediatrics
  • American Cancer Society
  • American College of Physicians
  • American Health Care Association
  • American Hospital Association
  • American Medical Association
  • American Nurses Association
  • Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
  • Families USA
  • Federation of American Hospitals
  • National Nurses United
  • National Physicians Allianceclose-male-doctor-stethoscope-footage-011965185_prevstill

GROUPS THAT SUPPORT IT:

  • Insurance Companies

Always remember that the current GOP in the House does not care about you. They don’t care about your health, they don’t care about what experts, doctors and specialists think is the best thing for your health, they don’t care about anything except who is giving them huge campaign contributions.

Fight back. Call your Congress member. Thank them if they voted against this, and shame them if they voted for it. They listen, and more importantly, Senators will be waiting to see how this plays out before voting on it. Make them scared. Kill it in the Senate by making the consequences dire for the House members that voted for it.

And remind them that we are their bosses. They work for us, not the insurance companies.

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Editorial cartoon: Paul Ryan’s Baby

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Clay Jones

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Bitching Solves Nothing

Recently overheard conversation:

“I can’t stand Trump and can’t believe he is our President!”

“Did you vote?”shut-up

“What?”

“Did you vote?”

“Well, no, but–“

“Goodbye.”

When bad things happen to good people, sometimes it’s because of blind luck or things way beyond our control. But when bad politicians get elected or pass laws we don’t like, this isn’t because of luck. It’s because we let them get away with it.

You have to get involved if you want to complain about things. You have to make the difference. This is true not only in politics, but in life. If you bitch about how you have a terrible job and no one loves you and the world is screwing you over and you do absolutely nothing to change that, then whose fault is it?

Have you ever read history and thought “If I were alive during the civil rights movement, I would have been marching next to Martin Luther King, Jr.”? Have you ever thought “If only those people had stood up to Hitler earlier, World War II wouldn’t have happened”?

Well, history hasn’t stopped. Now’s your chance to prove you weren’t just spouting off at the mouth. Don’t just bitch and complain — do something!

In many states, there are primary elections coming up. Get out and vote. Even in these small elections (and in fact, moreso), your vote really counts. Even if you don’t know anything about the candidates, go out and vote against the Republicans. Don’t think “Oh, it’s just the County Dog Catcher, who cares what party he’s in?” If he’s a Republican, that means it’s very likely he supports what our President is doing or he wouldn’t be a Republican. And even if he doesn’t, every Republican you elect helps the party grow, raise money, and push its agenda.

Posting memes on Facebook to your friends who probably already agree with your political views accomplishes nothing except making you feel good.

Do something! Participate in a march! Write your congressman! Run for office! Donate to groups that are fighting Trump and his agenda! (May I recommend my favorites:  Planned Parenthood, The American Civil Liberties Union, and American Atheists.)

And don’t ever let me hear you complain if that’s all you’re doing.

 

 

 

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Editorial cartoon: Still fighting the war

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Pat Bagley

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Christians are “broken people” who “cause poverty”

A Democratic Mayor of a prominent city recently said that Christians are “broken people” who are not “productive members of society.” She said that they were the “deepest systemic causes of generational poverty.”

This kind of bigotry is unacceptable, of course. We are a land that values our beliefs, and in fact, guarantee the right to believe or not believe in the very first Amendment. To degrade an entire group of people simply because of their beliefs is about as unAmerican as you can get. So you can imagine how people who strongly believe in the 1st Amendment and the values of our country are protesting this woman.

Oh.  Wait.  My mistake.

She didn’t say that about Christians. She said it about atheists.

Well, that’s completely different, isn’t it? Even though some estimates place non-believers in America somewhere in the 30% range (much larger than Jews or Muslims or Mormons or any non-Christian religion), it’s still perfectly acceptable to degrade, insult, and demean non-believers in a way that would ruin the career of any politician saying that about a religious group.

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Editorial cartoon: This Ain’t no Party

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Tom Tomorrow