Rural Kentuckians sold their healthcare to a businessman

Many Affordable Care Act recipients in rural Whitley County Kentucky are happy they elected Trump to office. In fact, 82 percent of people living in Whitley County Kentucky voted for Trump, who promised during his campaign to repeal and replace the ACA. Oh, but Republicans in Congress said they have a replacement.

Last time I checked, an alternative doesn’t exist.

Repealing the ACA will leave approximately 20 million without healthcare if they successfully repeal the ACA, including a few thousand people in Whitley County. That leaves Danielle Hayes, 26, without health insurance. And she’s okay with that.

“My issue with Obamacare [the ACA] is being forced into having insurance, and being threatened with jail time or a major fine without,” Hayes wrote on a Facebook post in response to a video about the ACA in Whitley County from Vox News. “Being from a country that was born on freedom, that doesn’t see very free to me.”

That feeling extends to a lot of rural Kentuckians. Vox News followed Kathy Oller, who spends her days signing up Whitley County residents for the ACA. Vox reported that the rate of uninsured people in the county decreased from 25 percent to 10 percent since 2013, yet a resounding majority voted for the Republican candidate despite their reliance on the ACA.

“I found with Trump, he says a lot of stuff,” Oller said in an interview with Vox News. “I just think all politicians promise you everything then we’ll see. It’s like when you get married – ‘Oh, honey, I won’t do this, oh honey, I won’t do that.’”

Oller and Hayes both don’t believe the ACA will be repealed, but the promises of Republicans, who control both houses of Congress and the presidency, say differently. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said in a statement, reported by the Boston Globe, that “in an ideal situation, we would repeal and replace the ACA simultaneously, but we need to make sure that we have at least a detailed framework that tells the American people what direction we’re headed.”

Currently, Republicans have not produced an alternative to the ACA, risking millions of Americans’ health, access to prescriptions, and access to doctors. The Washington Post reported that approximately 43,000 people will die each year if the ACA is repealed from a study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine. The Congressional Budget Office predicts 18 million people in the country will lose healthcare if the ACA is repealed and not replaced just in the first year of its repeal.

The irony is mindbloggling. So many people benefitted from the ACA, particularly in Whitley County, but then 82 percent of voters in Whitley County voted for a candidate and a party who promised to repeal the ACA.

“I disagree with being forced to have health insurance, for some, is unaffordable and inadequate,” Hayes said in an interview. “I find the consequences of not having [health insurance] to be ridiculous, and frankly, the whole idea of forcing individuals into these healthcare plans is un-American.”

Yes, the ACA has its faults. Nothing is perfect. Obama said in an interview with Vox News that he agrees subsidies aren’t high enough for working people. That’s fixable. Repealing the entire system, risking the lives of Americans to push a partisan agenda, is monstrous.

Obama and Democrats in Congress made a historical step towards universal healthcare; Trump will knock the country back a few decades. Comparing the difference between an “un-American,” government-mandated healthcare system to having access to affordable, life-saving measures tips the scales towards keeping the ACA. Hayes even said that she doesn’t think the ACA should be completely repealed, just improved for people like her. Despite this opinion, and the opinions of many Trump supporters, Republicans and Trump still plan on repealing the ACA.

Taking away the ACA is “un-American;” healthcare is a right. The Constitution doesn’t say the people have a direct right to healthcare, but it does say we have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For many, those basic liberties are stripped away when Trump and Republicans in Congress get their way.

I fear for the people who might lose their health coverage in the next year, but I fear more for the people who sold their healthcare access to a businessman.

Tennessee Senate Bill 944: Wolf in a Sheep’s Costume

You’re walking down the street in your local town, protesting a cause you firmly believe in. You have your sign in hand. You’re chanting alongside a few hundred people, all championing the same cause like keeping the local animal shelter open or for better quality meals in the public schools. You’re exercising your First Amendment right. Then suddenly, a car turns the corner onto the street where you’re walking and strikes a few marchers, sending everyone scattering for safety.

Despite the scare, it was accidental. But some of those protesters are injured, being carried off in an ambulance with bleeding gashes and possible concussions.

The driver, however, won’t see justice for their actions because you’re in Tennessee, and the law is on the driver’s side.

Prompted by protests in Nashville, Tennessee Jan. 29 over President Trump’s immigration ban, state Senate Bill 944 came from an incident involving safety volunteers being hit by a vehicle during the protest.

Policy investigate an accident during the Jan. 29 protests. Photo courtesy of WZTV.

“He struck us, and that’s when we were up on the hood,” said Jack Willey, a safety volunteer who was hit by the driver, in an interview with The Tennessean. “He went about a block with us [riding on the hood].”

Written by Senator Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the bill states “a person driving an automobile who is exercising due care and injures another person who is
participating in a protest or demonstration and is blocking traffic in a public right-of-way is immune from civil liability for such injury.”

Essentially, this bill protects motorists from civil liability if they hit a protester marching in the streets. Should this bill become law, a motorist can strike anyone with their car and get away with it as long as it can’t be proven that they were trying to hurt the pedestrian.

 

Public safety, although important, is disguised as a wolf in a sheep costume with this state bill. It takes a direct aim at the First Amendment right to assemble peacefully and to protest. The bill protects drivers who hit people with their cars rather than those exercising their right.

So, what’s the line between enacting law for public safety and upholding our Constitutional rights?

“I think you do have to balance between the first amendment and public safety,” said Dr. Bruce Hicks, a University of the Cumberlands political science professor. “That’s what the [TN General Assembly] is trying to do, but they haven’t gotten the balance right.”

Whatever that balance is, this bill tips the scales. The entire bill is half a page long, with most of it just formalities and extravagant spacing. The bill doesn’t define “due care,” the get-out-of-jail free card in clause A of Section 1, for those who hit pedestrian protesters. It doesn’t explain how authorities might determine if the “action was willful or wanton.” Brevity doesn’t work when the state legislature is messing with people’s Constitutional rights.

“I don’t understand how this adds to anything other than to discourage people from coming out and exercising their First Amendment right,” said Michelle Johnson, executive director of the nonprofit Tennessee Justice Center, in an interview with the Huffington Post. “[Lawmakers] are trying to play silly political games while rural Tennesseans have real issues. They need to govern.”

Johnson is right; Tennessee lawmakers have more important issues to deal with it, such as the gas tax increases and education, so why is Ketron and other lawmakers wasting time to protect motorists who hit protesters instead of upholding Constitutional rights or solving actual issues?

According to the Huffington Post, similar bills, proposed in North Dakota, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota, all failed despite Republican-controlled state legislatures. Although it seems like politics shouldn’t play a role in this bill, it does. And bi-partisan efforts triumphed in those states. Hopefully, Tennessee sees the ridiculousness of this bill and follows suit.

Keeping politics out of legislation is impossible, but our basic Constitutional rights should trump any legislation that threatens those rights, even when it’s supposedly for the sake of public safety.