Inspiration by Aspiration Will Turn Out the Vote

­From time to time I hear critiques of Bernie Sanders and some of the policies that he and Elizabeth Warren have espoused like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal as being unattainable and therefore bad politics. I disagree, in fact lofty goals are inspirational, look at John Kennedy’s goal of putting a man on the moon within a decade. That feat was thought unattainable by many and NASA scrambled to make it happen but we did it.

When we elected President Obama with promises to fix our broken health care system many thought he would fail since Bill and Hillary Clinton had failed to do it more than a decade earlier. My friends and I quickly learned that his proposal was a stretch as far as congress was concerned. We worked hard to convince Congressman Henry Cuellar, who represented Guadalupe County at that time, to support the bill which he finally did though he threw his share of monkey wrenches into the mix. Democratic Senators like Max Baucus from Montana held up the bill for months while stripping it of some of the best parts. We didn’t get everything we wanted but the Affordable Care Act was an improvement over what had existed before. Had our Republican governor not failed to take advantage of the tens of millions of dollars available to expand Medicaid, tens of thousands of Texans could be healthier and happier today.

During Obama’s presidency we learned that pre-emptive compromise intended to get the support of Republicans early in the process was a failure because they just moved the goalpost further off center. Now that many of us have turned our attention to electing a president to replace the ignoramus currently in office some folks seem to believe that the only important issue is winning the election and therefore we should choose a candidate that at least some who voted for Trump will vote for. Oddly they seem to think that those are folks who are somewhere in the middle on most policy issues. The reality is that those voters who voted for Obama in 2008/2012 then voted for Trump in 2016 wanted to “shake things up”, they didn’t vote for Trump as much as they voted against Hillary Clinton whom they viewed as an establishment candidate.

Pre-emptively compromising on a centrist/establishment candidate like Joe Biden or Mike Bloomberg, etc. isn’t going to win over those voters, they’ll just go for another four years of Trump trashing our democracy, violating the constitution, and lining his own pockets with public funds. Instead we need an inspirational candidate who talks about the possibilities that can be achieved. Joe Biden has essentially campaigned on bringing another four years of the Obama presidency. First Biden no Barack Obama and second at least the people I talk to think it’s time to move forward not have more of the same.

Voters who switched to Trump after voting for Obama wanted to shake things up because they felt that our federal government was more responsive to big business than working class people and they’re absolutely right even if their prescription for fixing it was totally wrong. Giving them a candidate that doesn’t offer a big change in how our government works isn’t going to bring them back.

Early voting started yesterday, vote for the candidate whose message inspires you and your family because that is the candidate who will inspire others. For me that’s Bernie Sanders.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 19, 2020

Medicare For All Good For All

Last week’s column discussed the advantages of Medicare for All from the point of view of any individual, everyone would be covered with the same benefits regardless of what size business they work for and even if that employer shuts down or lays off workers. This week let’s review the advantages of Medicare for All to businesses and the entire economy.

Did you know that General Motors spends more per car on health insurance than it does on the steel in the car? Not so for Japanese and Korean car makers since the employer doesn’t provide health insurance, it comes from their respective federal governments via Medicare for All type programs. That saves them a couple of thousand dollars right off the top.

When unions, even those few in Texas, negotiate with employers the issue they all have in common is health insurance and it is often the issue that is hardest to resolve. Just a few years ago the City of San Antonio was in a protracted and fraught contract fight with the Firefighters Union and the biggest issue was health insurance.

When a young couple with a child or two is considering whether or not to strike out on their own and start a business one of the biggest stumbling blocks is health insurance and maintaining it in the face of both a slow start for the business and the potential failure of it. What modestly successful person is willing to risk the health and lives of their family when also taking the big financial risk of starting their own business? No other developed country so dampens the entrepreneurial spirit as does the United States.

As the prices of drugs and medical care in general continue to soar upward every employer that offers health insurance does their best to minimize the cost while providing the level of coverage necessary to retain their employees. One of the ways to do that for employers large enough to handle it is to become the insurer themselves. Schertz/Cibolo/Universal City ISD did this a few years ago and it has proven successful at restraining cost growth such that while the district isn’t paying any less than before the teachers and staff aren’t paying any more in premiums, deductibles, and co-pays than they were a couple of years ago. Compared to what all parties would be paying if SCUC ISD still used a third party insurance company they’ve generated real savings by cutting out the middleman.

SCUC ISD contracts out for administration of their health plan, that’s the part that involves paying claims by health care providers. It also pays a premium to a re-insurance company in case of a bad health year or several employees contracting catastrophic illnesses like cancer, yet it is still a government agency providing health insurance on its own. That’s a small step, taken by many others, toward government health insurance that shows it is viable here in the United States.

There is plenty of evidence that shows that children, aka future employees, who receive adequate health care from conception to adulthood grow up to be both healthier and more productive workers. The Medicare for All plans proposed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren address of the issues I’ve written about this week and last. There are no disadvantages to Medicare for All unless you think that wealthy people automatically deserve good health care and poor kids don’t.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 11, 2019

Medicare For All Tough To Beat

Every now and again I run into a Democrat who says they support healthcare reform but not the Medicare for All plans promoted by Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. When asked why, they say they have a good plan through their employer and don’t want to give it up, that they support a “public option” where everyone has the choice to buy into Medicare. What those folks fail to realize is that while the plan they have now may be very good, Medicare for All is also much more that traditional Medicare and is actually better than most commercial plans.

How many commercial plans out there have a total annual out of pocket of $200 and that is limited to prescription drugs? No co-pay or deductible to go to the doctor with a sore throat and fever. No co-pay or deductible to take your child to the doctor for a broken arm. No co-pay or deductible for an emergency room visit for a heart attack or the intensive care unit, or surgery, or later rehabilitation. How many commercial plans cover the entire bill for all that? I know mine sure doesn’t. My colonoscopy last month was $1400 out of pocket. I haven’t gotten the bill from the anesthesiologist or the pathology lab where the biopsies were done yet. Hopefully I won’t meet my $6000 deductible for the year.

Just like current Medicare any doctor or service provider, like physical therapists, licensed or certified in Texas can apply and be accepted. Unlike traditional Medicare, the Medicare for All plan proposed by Bernie Sanders also includes dental care, hearing aids and exams, as well as vision benefits. Bernie’s plan also pays for home and community based long-term care and services, think home health aide visits to the elderly at home, or nursing homes for those in need of constant monitoring.

Just as important, while the plan people have through their employer might be just as good as Medicare for All, what happens when that employer moves to another city or state like AT&T did when it moved its headquarters from San Antonio to Dallas some years ago forcing people to find another job if they didn’t want to move? What happens if the industry they’re in or the overall economy turns down and the employer lays them off? What happens if they become too sick to work, perhaps due to cancer or other debilitating illness? The answer is that formerly great insurance is no longer available, they might have access via COBRA for a while but the premium will be sky high and if they’re not working how will they pay that outrageous premium?

45 percent of Americans are worried a major illness could leave them bankrupt, 1 out of 4 Americans skipped needed medical care because they could not afford it, and 77 percent are concerned rising health costs will cause significant and lasting damage to our economy. With these awful statistics it’s laughable that Medicare for All skeptics most common complaint is “how will we pay for it?” First let’s recognize that we’re paying more now for less. Elizabeth Warren pays for her plan by raising taxes on billionaires by adding a tax of 6 percent on net wealth above $1 billion, repealing Trump's tax give away to the rich, and treating long-term capital gains like regular income. In addition her plan calls for restoring funding for the Internal Revenue Service so it can go back to auditing the rich they way it did 20 years ago which is expected to recover $230 billion a year.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 4, 2019

ACA Not Good Enough for All Americans

Too many Americans still can’t afford health insurance even after passage of the Affordable Care Act and four million have lost their subsidies on the through Exchanges over the last four years. A recently released study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that particularly older and rural folks find it hard to afford individual insurance whether on the Affordable Care Act Exchange markets or not.

Part of the problem is that Exchange subsidies cut off federal assistance for premiums at incomes at 400 percent of the poverty line, or nearly $49,000 for an individual and just over $100,000 for a family of four. Rather than phasing out by reducing the subsidy gradually the subsidy just disappears, lending the phenomenon the name "subsidy cliff." The Kaiser study uses this example: "On average across the U.S., a 40-year-old making $45,000 would pay $227 a month (6% of their income) for a subsidized bronze exchange plan, whereas the same person making $50,000 would pay $340 a month (8% of their income) for the same plan without a subsidy."

And if you’re older it goes from bad to worse: "a 27-year-old making $50,000 would pay 7% of their income in premiums for the average lowest-cost plan nationally, whereas a 60-year-old making the same income would pay 17% of their income in premiums. Even at an income of $70,000 (577% of the poverty level), a 60-year-old would have to pay 12% of income for a low-cost plan on average."

Rural areas get hit even harder since health insurance there is even more expensive. The Kaiser study provides this example of a 60-year-old in almost any county in Nebraska, earning $50,000 and paying between 30 percent and 50 percent of their income in premiums. And that's for the least expensive, ACA-compliant plans.

There are several ways to deal with the problem. One way is to eliminate the subsidy cliff by adjusting the subsidy so that the premium paid by the insured is never more that 6% of their income. That’s an expensive solution. A better way would be to expand Medicare to cover people 50 and older. Even better is the Medicare For All Act of 2019 introduced last week by Representatives Debbie Dingell, Pramila Jayapal, and co-sponsored by over 100 other members of Congress.

Our current healthcare system in the United States is ineffective, inefficient and outrageously expensive. Around 70 million Americans are uninsured or cannot afford the costs of their co-pays and deductibles. The quality of our healthcare is worse than other industrialized countries with lower life expectancy in the U.S. than other nations, and a much higher infant mortality. The U.S. spends more money per capita on healthcare than any other industrialized nation in part because we waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year on unnecessary administrative costs like insurance CEO salaries in the millions of dollars, while healthcare industry executives measure success in profits, instead of patient care.

When the Franklin Roosevelt administration created Social Security conservatives fought it but the lives of millions of older Americans were improved immediately and seniors have continued to benefit from it 80 years later. When Medicare was passed under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson conservatives fought it, Ronald Reagan even made speeches calling it socialism, but again millions of older Americans lives were improved and seniors today recognize their lives would be much worse without it. Conservatives are fighting Medicare for All but it will improve the lives of tens of millions of Americans and save us and our country billions of dollars at the same time.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 8, 2019

Judge's Ruling Indicator That Medicare For All Necessary

Well over one million Texans stand to lose their health insurance due to a federal court decision, here in Texas, striking down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety a week ago today. The lawsuit was brought by the Attorneys General of 18 Republican controlled states. Interestingly the suit was brought in the Northern District of Texas where U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, is the only active judge so it has the appearance of judge shopping. O’Connor held off on handing down the decision on this case for months as it was argued in his court in the Spring. Whether he did it for political reasons or not is hard to say but it sure seems odd that he waited until a month after elections were over before rendering the decision given that this issue would have been fodder for the O’Rourke and Cruz senate campaigns.

In addition to those losing health insurance they previously got through the Marketplace with subsidies there are others who will be affected by the ruling. By striking down the entire bill, limits on how much more older people can be charged for coverage compared to younger people are also eliminated so those of us 50 to 65 may find our health insurance premiums suddenly take a big jump. The ruling also eliminates the ban on annual and lifetime caps on how much your insurance will cover so if a member of your family comes down with cancer it will be possible for your insurer to stop paying for life saving medicine and treatment after paying $1 million. In addition the judge’s ruling means that children over 18 no longer are allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26. The same ruling means that a host of preventive care services previously mandated to be provided with no co-pay are no longer required.

Then there are those like my wife who have Medicare Part D covering their prescription drugs; under the Affordable Care Act the donut hole which is the amount of out of pocket money spent on prescriptions was substantially reduced, if O’Connor’s decision stands she and others like her will go start spending thousands more for their medications. There are other less well known parts of the law such as the requirement for background checks on all nursing home staff that are also eliminated by striking down the law.

Many in the legal community were surprised by the ruling and believe it will be overturned since the Affordable Care Act has survived 70 other attacks including twice in the Supreme Court, especially since Congress just had an opportunity to repeal the law and instead chose to eliminate only the individual mandate to purchase insurance. If they’re right we’ll have dodged a bullet aimed squarely at those of us least able to afford the cost of recovering.

Regardless of whether or not Judge O’Connor’s decision is overturned it’s quite clear that there is still a long way to go to truly become the equitable society that this nation aspires to be. It’s past time for the United States to convert to a single payer system like that proposed in the Medicare for All bill supported by most Democrats including our own congressman, Vicente Gonzalez. Claims that Medicare for All is un-affordable are ridiculous given that nearly every other industrialized nation in the world has used such a system for decades.

This January Medicare for All should be part of the Democrats agenda in Washington. Look for a similar bill in the Texas legislature as well.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 21, 2018

Democrats Know the Solution is Medicare for All

In 2009 when the Democratic controlled Congress passed and President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, there was hope that nearly all Americans would soon be able to access healthcare, especially preventive care. It was expected that millions who had previously suffered, thousands who would have died and tens of thousands who would have gone bankrupt or heavily into debt would be able to breathe a sigh of relief. Some few claims by proponents turned out to be exaggerated but on the whole millions did indeed get health insurance at a price they could afford and had access to doctors and prescription medication previously unavailable to them. Even before the ink was dry on President Obama’s signature, Republicans in Congress and state governments began working to prevent Americans from having affordable healthcare. Governor Rick Perry declared that Texas would not expand Medicaid and thus denied one million Texans, many of them children the opportunity to see a doctor and receive adequate treatment.

If you’ve listened to their excuses for their behavior it becomes quite clear that in the conservative mind only those who have jobs with sufficient income even deserve the benefit of healthcare. Now they don’t say it outright but that’s really what it boils down to. If you get sick or have an accident you can get as much healthcare as you can pay for. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, it just matters how much you’re paid for it.

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was an attempt to satisfy the conservative mind by retaining the capitalist model of the existing system and even making it more profitable for insurers, as they’d have more customers, while taking care of a far greater portion of the American public. It works fairly well at what it was intended to do and would work better if Republicans including the current White House resident would stop trying to break it.

The experiment has also shown us that the capitalist approach to healthcare is not the solution that Republicans claim it is. Private insurance companies drive up the cost of care in a number of ways including the right to take 20% of premiums for themselves. In addition they cost the medical profession significant amounts due to arcane billing procedures and delays in payments. Worse still private insurers often make difficult to actually receive the care we think we’re paying for by denying the treatment the doctor prescribed for any number of reasons. When Republicans were fighting the Affordable Care Act they complained about unelected bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor, I find it telling that they had no such concerns about the flunkies of profit seeking corporations getting between you and your doctor.

Democrats in Congress and the Texas legislature have come around to an idea that many in the public already had which is that the solution to the high and often unaffordable cost of healthcare is to make it a part of what you get for your tax dollars just like every other industrialized nation on earth and even places like Iraq.

In Congress, Democrats are actively pushing for a bill known as Medicare for All while in the Texas legislature we can look forward to something similar. Both bills guarantee that every resident will receive comprehensive healthcare services. Individuals will have free choice of licensed health professionals and services including vision and dental care as well as home healthcare, adult day care, and hospice.

Healthcare for millions more Americans at lower cost, what other reason do you need to vote for Democrats in November?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 16, 2018

Health Care Promises versus Real Proposals

When running for president, Trump claimed he already had plans in the works for fixing the healthcare mess this country has suffered for 70 years.  Candidate Trump promised “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” in an interview with The Washington Post. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us” he continued. On another occasion he claimed "​I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not, the government's gonna pay for it." Not only have those promises not been kept; there has been no actual plan proposed by the Trump administration that would even attempt to fulfill them.

Democrats in congress have already filed legislation that would address all those issues, it’s called Medicare for All and our congressman, Vicente Gonzalez, is a sponsor of the bill. There’s a reason that the “market” can’t provide health care for all at reasonable costs. Health care isn’t like a commodity or even most services.

When you need it you don’t have time to shop around, sometimes you need it regardless of the cost so rising prices don’t substantially affect demand as they would for most commodities and for the most part there is no substitute or alternative. If the price of potatoes goes up people eat more rice or bread. As the price of beef has risen people switch to chicken. When you’ve got an infection that’s gone septic your alternatives are strong antibiotics with hospital care or surgery to remove the affected limb or death. I know because my wife spent three months in the hospital and various rehabilitation facilities after coming close to death.

Another claim was “I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we’re going through.” I got a raise in February and in March my insurance premium went up almost exactly the same amount. While not every reader may have experienced it I’ll bet most of you have found that your insurance premiums have risen yet again.

A recent study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University projects that if Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill were to pass overall health costs would go down, and wages would go up. Had the study been done by some group at the University of California at Berkeley I’d expect a lot of complaints of liberal bias, in this case the Mercatus Center is backed by wealthy Libertarian Koch brothers. So if even the far right can see the benefits of the Democrats bill we should all be confident it’s the real deal.

Early in his campaign, candidate Trump claimed on Twitter, “I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid”. In October 2015, he tweeted, "I am going to save Medicare and Medicaid, …”. So far there’s  been no indication that he’s actually working to avoid cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and since the Republican controlled congress is working on legislation to slash both programs in the name of deficit reduction he’d better get a move on or he’ll fail to fulfill yet another campaign promise.

In November if we elect a Democratic governor, state senate and state house they could then pass the  Healthy Texas Act which would provide similar coverage to Medicare for All but just in Texas. If you believe that everyone deserves health care get out and vote for Democrats in November.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 3, 2018

A Difference Worthy of Voting

I’ve often heard non-voters say that they don’t bother to vote because all politicians are alike or it doesn’t matter who wins. Of course they’re always wrong but more so this year as there’s a tremendous contrast between Democrats and Republicans right now.

Congressional Democrats are working to put more Americans to work and assure them of better lives. Republicans in Congress are proposing to reduce spending on Social Security and Medicare to cover the deficit they created by giving 80% of tax cuts to millionaires. Most Americans aren’t noticing any difference in their take home pay.

There are two ways to cut that spending, they can tighten eligibility rules by raising the minimum age yet again or they can reduce benefits. Every time we raise retirement age we hurt lower income people more that higher income folks because it’s the lower income workers who do the jobs that wear out their bodies fastest. Raising the eligibility age for Medicare will financially hurt those with health conditions because they’ll be forced to stay on private insurance which will charge them higher premiums due to the care they need. As to cutting benefits, it’s already near impossible to retire on social security alone and still pay for health care, housing and other necessities.

Congressional Democrats on the other hand are proposing expanding Medicare to cover everyone which could cut premiums an average of 13%. Medicare has a 2% overhead rate while insurance companies are allowed 15% over the cost of medical care provided. Democrats also propose dealing with the high cost of medications and medical devices which will help control the overall cost of health care. State Democrats are expected to introduce legislation to create a Texas version of Medicare for All. Considering that Texas has the highest number of uninsured citizens in the country that would help a lot of folks. There will be a rally and march in support of both ideas at Hemisphair Park in San Antonio tomorrow at 10am.

Democrats also have proposed legislation to put more Americans to work called the Jobs for All Act and there is another proposal in discussion to create a federal job guarantee so that anyone who wants a job will have one that pays a living wage and provides benefits like paid vacations and sick leave. Democrats are also pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage and index it for inflation so that workers don’t see their wages fall behind and have to wait a decade or more before action is taken to restore their purchasing power.

Actions speak louder than words and nearly every action Republicans have taken since Trump took office has harmed Americans in one way or another. Democrats are fighting to improve all our lives by assuring that every American has access to health care, every worker earns a living wage and can retire with dignity at a reasonable age, and anyone who wants to work has the opportunity whether or not the private sector needs them.

There is a huge difference between the parties and their candidates and that difference makes it worth the effort to vote. If you have moved recently take a few minutes to update your voter registration, remind family and friends who have moved to do the same. We can change the direction of the country in November but we have to start now.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 15, 2018

In the last presidential election Donald Trump ran a faux populist campaign that fooled just enough people in the right states to win. Just six months into his term we can already see that he is not who he claimed to be. He claimed to have a healthcare plan that would cover more people at lower cost when in fact he had no plan at all.

The United States is the only developed country that doesn’t provide routine healthcare to all its citizens. In the last week or so the real populist group Our Revolution, a Bernie Sanders campaign spinoff, announced its Summer for Progress project which includes providing good healthcare to all Americans. The group is supporting HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act filed by long time supporter John Conyers.

Our Revolution knows that there is more to be done than just insuring that the sick get the treatment they need. It is unacceptable that a person should work a full time job and still live in poverty so Our Revolution is promoting the Raise the Wage Act, HR 15, which would raise the minimum wage. Remember as it stands now our tax dollars subsidize the profits of some of America’s most profitable companies, think Walmart, by providing benefits like food stamps and housing assistance to their employees whom they pay poverty wages.

Back in the 1960’s a high school education would enable a worker to get a job that would lead them to a middle class life but that hasn’t been possible in decades yet attaining a college education is impossible for too many Americans due to the high costs. I can still remember television ads for the United Negro College Fund which used the tag line “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”. That idea is as true today as it ever was and applies to even more people. Keep in mind that one of reasons that companies use when applying to bring in foreign workers is that there aren’t enough Americans with the necessary skills here in the U.S. If we educated our citizens we might find that wasn’t the case so Our Revolution is promoting the College for All Act, HR 1880 which would pay the tuition and fees for any American who attends a two year or four year college.

Today many Texans think they’re registering to vote when they get a drivers license or update it but even though they mark the box the Department of Public Safety doesn’t always forward the information to the Secretary of State so the person remains unregistered and when they show up at the polls they’re unable to vote. A federal lawsuit was filed last year over this but that’s not enough, it’s time we require every state to automatically register voters who pass through their drivers license offices so Our Revolution is promoting the Automatic Voter Registration Act, HR 2840 which would do just that.

While these issues and more are important right now we have an even larger, worldwide problem looming over us and that’s global climate change. It is now a certainty that the next 50 years will see more frequent crop failures due to longer, deeper droughts. We’ll see more frequent, more intense hurricanes. In order to minimize the damage we have to stop wrecking the environment soon so Our Revolution is supporting congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in developing a Climate Change bill.

Join us 10am Saturday at Hemisfair Park in support of Medicare for All.

Published in the Seguin Gazette July 28, 2017

Are We Terrorists or Christians?

In 2001 the entire country was up in arms after the attack on 9/11 that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Thousands of people, rich and poor, teenagers and 30 somethings volunteered to join our military and risk their lives in order to take the battle to the terrorists.

This week the Congressional Budget Office reported that the Senate healthcare bill will cause 22 million Americans to lose their health insurance. We know from studies done after the release of the similar House bill which causes 23 million to lose their insurance that between 10,000 and 30,000 of those folks will then die unnecessarily.

Even taking the low number that’s more than three times as many people dying every year than who died in the 9/11 attack. We went to war over that attack. We spent trillions of dollars to fight that war on the basis of preventing another attack. Yet now, 16 years later, our elected leaders are willing to allow 10,000 mostly poor people to die every year in order to give rich people a tax break. Not only that but thousands more will go bankrupt, losing their homes and everything they’ve ever worked for.

How are we any better than the terrorists if we lie down and take it when the Donald Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress deny children healthcare simply because their parents are too poor to pay for it? How are we better than the terrorists if we accept that grandmothers will be turned out of the nursing homes that provide the medical care they need because their families don’t have the resources to pay for it? How are we any better than the terrorists if we continue to allow sick people to suffer and die to save a few dollars on our taxes?

I frequently hear claims that this is a Christian nation most often by some Republican elected official. If you believe that, how to you reconcile that with denying hardworking people and their families life saving healthcare? I can’t make that connection because the nuns who taught me at St. Lawrence the Martyr and the brothers who taught me at Archbishop Rummel made it very clear that “when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!"

The majority of Americans don’t want what John Cornyn wants to pass of on us. We disagree with Ted Cruz that the bill isn’t tough enough. Most Americans want something better than the Affordable Care Act not something worse. There is a better replacement available that most Americans do support. The replacement is called Medicare for All, or single payer. Medicare could be everyone’s health insurance plan whether a new born or a great-grandmother, sick or healthy, rich or poor. It wouldn’t matter if got cancer after the company you worked for went out of business or moved the factory to China because your health insurance wouldn’t be attached to your employer. You’d never be in the situation where you or your child got sick when you didn’t have insurance.

If America is really a Christian nation shouldn’t we start acting like one?