Category Archives: All Politics Is Local

Praise for the Senate Health Care Bill

Dr. Ben Danielson, senior medical director at a Seattle children’s clinic, commented on the current health care bill before the Senate:

“I have to start off by, I guess, congratulating all the millionaires on the incredible gift they are about to get. I always wondered what you get for the person who has everything, and now I know; it’s cutting benefits to young children, poor families, the infirm, the elderly.”(Quoted by Danny Westneat, The Seattle Times, “Doctor Calls GOP’s Bluff on Health Bill,” June 25, 2017.)

The sarcasm of the obviously frustrated doctor aside, what might a truly praiseworthy health care bill look like?

First of all, it would provide preventive based health care for every American. The goal is health care that encourages healthy lives, not just paying medical bills when we are sick.

Compare it to preventive maintenance on our cars. People who care about their vehicles don’t wait to change the oil after it’s become so dirty that it begins to damage the engine. We change oil at set times and perform other maintenance checks as well: brakes, tires, and so on.

Preventive health care requires care for the healthy at least as much as for the sick. It works best when it begins early and lasts throughout life. Requiring all to buy health insurance that pays for regular checkups saves money in the long run.

Today, the money we spend on health insurance for the elderly is more expensive because we didn’t begin it an earlier age.

Starting healthcare at the beginning of a life has the potential to lessen drug abuse, not to mention obesity and other health challenges.

Prevention is so much less expensive than emergency room management.

Abolishing Groupthink—Searching for Loyal Opposition

Each year, a “dissent” award is given to one or more U.S. diplomats for disagreeing with their bosses.

It’s awarded for constructively dissenting from official foreign policies of the U.S. government. So far as I know, it’s unique in government service, begun during the turmoil of the Vietnam conflict.

Perhaps we need constructive dissent awards for Democratic and Republican politicians. They could be awarded to those loyal members of their parties who constructively dissent from the direction their party is heading.

Recently, an article in The Economist questioned groupthink—being so concerned with harmony within a group that no one questions irrational or wrong policies. The article suggested that a group lower the cost of disagreement and perhaps defuse crises that arise in democracies (“Free Exchange: How to Be Wrong,” June 19, 2017).

We tend to become polarized and fall into yes or no positions on issues. Yet solutions to problems are seldom cut and dried. Considering alternates or alterations to policies may yield wiser solutions. More realistic answers are found in the center.

Hiring Bank Presidents to Perform Appendectomies

When we need surgery, we don’t ask a bank president to perform the operation. To lead soldiers into battle, we don’t assign data engineers.

Yet, in assigning leaders for our foreign policy teams in U.S. embassies, we sometimes appoint those with no experience in foreign affairs. Instead, the criteria used for ambassadors to some of our embassies, is how much the candidate has contributed to the election of the president.

Both political parties have used the appointment of ambassadors to reward political donors and party apparatchiks. Around thirty percent of our ambassadors have been political appointees. Some talented and conscientious appointees use their career staff and function well. Others are more interested in refurbishing the ambassador’s residence than in meaningful work.

American men and women enter the U.S. Foreign Service, our diplomatic corps, after rigorous exams and vetting. Once appointed, they study foreign languages, statecraft, relevant computer applications, leadership training, and the regions where they will be assigned. They advance through the diplomatic ranks according to an up or out system like the military, gaining experience in the foreign countries where they begin at the lowest levels.

Yet when ambassadors are assigned to our largest embassies, career Foreign Service officers often are ignored for the positions.

My first assignment as a new Foreign Service officer was to Saudi Arabia, shortly before the first Gulf War began in 1991. As the war progressed to victory for the American led alliance against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, we worked under a competent team. Charles Freeman was the U.S. career ambassador working with the Saudi government, as General “Stormin” Norman Schwarzkopf directed the military operation.

Since then, although U.S. military leadership in the Middle East is still entrusted to career soldiers, all ambassadorial appointments to Saudi Arabia have been political appointees. Perhaps that’s one reason we so often seem to win the war but lose the peace.

Coup: The Day the Democrats Ousted Their Governor, Put Republican Lamar Alexander in Office Early, and Stopped a Pardon Scandal

This book, by Keel Hunt, recounts the story of how a scandal plagued Tennessee governor was relieved of his duties so the recently elected candidate, of the opposition party, could be sworn in early.

It is an excellent story of a democracy’s triumph, but important to that triumph are the news organizations that investigated allegations against the governor.

After Ray Blanton, a Democrat, was elected governor, the publisher of the Tennessee Journal discovered that a convicted double murderer was working as a photographer for the state of Tennessee. The felon had served only a couple of months of his sentence. Governor Ray Blanton had apparently gotten the murderer a work-release status as a favor to a friend.

Reporters of other news organizations began investigating. When asked repeatedly about the case, Blanton became defiant, at one point vowing he would not “answer any more negative questions.”

As questions persisted and news organizations continued probing, other dubious practices by Blanton came to light. Eventually, he was voted out of office, losing to Lamar Alexander. (Alexander now serves as one of Tennessee’s congressional senators.)

In his last days in office, Blanton began signing papers to pardon some prisoners and offer clemency for others. This included the commutation of sentences for several murderers. In order to avoid a continuance of what was termed “cash for clemency,” his own Democratic party joined with Alexander’s Republican party to swear him in early.

Politicians put in a bad light, whether or not they are guilty as was Blanton, tend to dislike negative publicity. They dislike being put on the spot or to be annoyed.

Sometimes they lose control, as Greg Gianforte apparently did before he assaulted a reporter asking him a question about healthcare. He is recorded as screaming at the reporter, “I’m sick and tired of you guys.” Gianforte has since apologized, saying he “made a mistake.”

As far as I know, President Donald Trump has not apologized for calling certain leading American news organizations “the enemy of the American People.”

Having lived in countries where the news was managed and reporters could not ask those obnoxious questions, I have come to believe nosey reporters are as important to a democracy as are elections.

Oops! Man Discovers He Is an American After All

Danny Westneat, in a column for The Seattle Times (May 3, 2017) recounted the story of a retired Seattle schoolteacher, Ruben Van Kempen, who applied for his social security benefits and was refused. (He’d received letters from Social Security for years that totaled up his retirement benefits.)

Van Kempen, of Indonesian heritage, immigrated to the U.S. from Holland in 1962. He became a U.S. citizen in 1982. For 37 years, he taught drama in Seattle public schools.

With his application for Social Security, he had submitted evidence of his U.S. passport and his naturalization certificate granting him U.S. citizenship. Then Van Kempen received a letter from Social Security saying his application could not be processed because of his immigration status.

He tried again in person, submitting all his documents at a Social Security office.

Social Security sent him a letter saying they were unable to verify his immigration document. Further, the letter read, “Please contact us when your alien status changes or is renewed, so you can work in the U.S.”

Van Kempen couldn’t help but wonder: “Am I being swept up in something related to immigration? Is it something about my Indonesian heritage? . . . Can I travel? If I leave my country, will they let me back in?”

It would also cost him money. Without the Medicare medical coverage he had been paying into for 37 years, he would have to pay over $625 a month for health coverage.

Van Kempen’s political representatives went to work for him, including the state governor’s office and his congressional representatives.

Westneat reported two weeks later (May 17, 2017) on a response from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: “It appears that in Mr. Van Kempen’s case, there was a technical error.”

His information had been wrongly entered into a database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE). Its purpose is to vet non citizens who have visas to work in the U.S. and other non citizens applying for benefits. No U.S. citizen is supposed to be entered into that database.

The entry of Van Kempen, a U.S. citizen, into the system may very well have been a technical error. Mistakes do happen.

Yet, the current furor over refugees and immigration issues has caused questions about U.S. citizens being erroneously targeted.

“It turns out,” Westneat reported, “Republicans have been championing efforts to expand the same Alien Verification program he got caught up in as a means to purge the voter registration rolls.”

So what might happen to other Americans if voter rolls are entered into databases such as SAVE?

Trump’s Tax Proposals: Boon or Boondoggle?

President Donald Trump’s tax proposals are interesting, to say the least. On May 4, 2017, The Economist magazine talked with Trump about the proposals. Steve Mnuchin, treasury secretary, and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council also were present.

Trump suggested that the elimination of certain taxes, including, for example, taxes paid by the wealthy for the Affordable Care Act, would result in tremendous savings for taxpayers.

The proposals also call for drastic cuts in many social and environmental programs. However, the cuts to these programs would not offset deficits caused by less money coming in from taxes.

When questioned by The Economist about the increase in deficits, Trump said such deficits were “priming the pump.”

He claimed the deficits would only last a couple of years and then magically disappear because eliminating the taxes would result in a stronger economy. Trump officials talk of a 3% growth rate, which most economists think is unsustainable. (While campaigning, Trump talked of a 5% growth rate.)

The Economist’s assessment of the tax proposals:

“Trumponomics is a poor recipe for long-term prosperity. America will end up more indebted and more unequal. It will neglect the real issues, such as how to retrain hardworking people whose skills are becoming redundant.” (The Economist, “Courting Trouble,” May 13, 2017.)

According to The Economist, Trumponomics “is not an economic doctrine at all. It is best seen as a set of proposals put together by businessmen courtiers for their king.”

Grace Under Firing: The Gift of Gratitude

An American diplomat, Thomas Countryman, was fired by the Trump administration a few days after Trump took office as president. Countryman was on his way to a conference on arms control when he learned of his sudden ousting.

Countryman had given thirty-five years of service to his country. He was a talented career officer, relieved of duty in a purge reminiscent of the old Soviet Union.

One might expect him to be bitter. Instead, in a farewell address to his U.S. State Department colleagues, Countryman wrote: “Some of you have asked if recent events have left me disgruntled. The answer is no; I am probably the most ‘gruntled’ person in the room.”

He quoted from another retiring ambassador: “The State Department doesn’t owe me anything. It has given me everything.” Countryman went on to count the blessings in his career of service.

Another official unceremoniously relieved of his duties, James Comey, wrote in a similar vein to his former FBI colleagues: “I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for no reason at all. I’m not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. I hope you won’t either. It is done, and I will be fine, although I will miss you and the mission deeply.”

He ended the letter: “Working with you has been one of the great joys of my life. Thank you for that gift.”

Donald Trump also has much to be thankful for. He was granted the opportunity to serve his country in ways given only to a few.

However, his tweets, his main form of communication, show little evidence of grace or gratitude. Perhaps he should ponder the words of those public servants that he has attempted to humiliate.

The New Elites

We common people watch as the new government elites, those who won political power in 2016, battle among themselves.

Will the family clan, represented by Jared Kushner, win? Will they defeat the ultra conservatives, led by Steve Bannon? Or will Bannon’s group claim victory and bring down government as we have known it since our recovery from the 1930’s Great Depression?

Yet the battle over healthcare suggests an outside chance for ordinary Americans to influence outcomes. How will their interests fare in the looming battle over tax reform?

Will tax changes benefit mostly the wealthy, including the Trump family? Or will changes lead to the wealthy paying their fair share and taking some of the burden off working and middle class families?

Will popular government programs like social security, benefitting ordinary Americans, survive or will we continue our slide toward the inequality of the robber baron era?

Will tax breaks, sometimes used by big corporations to pay little or no taxes, continue to feed our deficit? Or will we ask for a level playing field for the small businesses that provide so many of our jobs?

In the 2016 election, voters supposedly defeated government elites. Now we will see if they can defeat business elites.

I’ve Never Been Hungry . . .

The only time I’ve gone to bed hungry was when I was on a voluntary fast for medical or religious reasons. I’ve never wondered where my next meal was coming from.

I’ve always owned or rented housing with a warm, secure place to sleep.

Except for a few years in my early twenties, I’ve always had health insurance.

I’ve never been jobless, except voluntarily to raise my small children.

For these blessings, I can claim no special goodness or intelligence. I did not choose the parents who loved and nurtured me. I did not choose to live in a time when a college education was affordable for the average family or when most corporations provided health insurance and adequate salaries, and the government began a pension program for all its working citizens.

A society is fair and just only if every child has food, clothing, a secure place in which to grow up, health services, and proper education. Jobs should provide parents adequate salaries as well as the time to nurture their children.

Our religious and voluntary organizations encourage the sharing of blessings. The U.S. Constitution, also, in its preamble, makes the government a partner in these efforts. One of the reasons for our union is to “promote the general welfare.”

Our government is not a business run by a boss to gain material profits for a few owners. It exists for us all, not for a favored few.

Not Waiting on Washington (D.C., That Is)

According to our utility company, more of our local electricity is derived from solar energy. Some of it will be produced from a converted former Navy housing site that will sell this newer form of energy.

Still another solar farm is replacing coal-fired plants. It is reported to cover over 600 acres and is among the largest in the country. It will serve more than 17,000 homes.

Executive orders from the Trump administration have rolled back environmental regulations. At the local level, however, changes to less polluting forms of energy continue.

The administration has promised legislation to update our infrastructure and produce more jobs. Hopefully, whatever measures are passed will include support for jobs in the newer energy industries.

The two most populous countries in the world, China and India, are searching for solutions to unhealthy levels of pollution. Think of all those potential customers.

Death is Still Certain; Taxes—Who Knows?

The famous quote: “Nothing is certain except death and taxes” is attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Today taxes are still certain. It’s the kind of taxes and who pays them that appear up for grabs.

Few would disagree with the complaint in The Economist (April 1, 2017) that “the most striking thing about tax in America is its complexity.” Much of the complexity, the article suggests, is because of the number of tax breaks. The U.S. congress has passed multitudes over the years, many of which benefit the wealthy.

The chief source of income for the average American is the wage he or she earns for a job. One criticism of the U.S. tax system is that it tends to tax this kind of income rather than wealth. The wealthy can afford tax advice to take advantage of the myriad—and legal—tax breaks.

This is not to say that the wealthy should be criminalized. Many wealthy individuals donate to worthy causes and use their money to create jobs. However, if tax reform is to take place, it should result in less burden on the working and middle classes and a fairer share paid by the wealthy.

If the Trump administration found healthcare to be more complicated than expected, tax reform promises to be even more difficult. Like healthcare, tax reform should be fair to ordinary Americans. The U.S. deficit does not need to increase because more tax breaks are given to wealthy citizens.

Short Term Thinking Can Be Deadly

No doubt the new administration’s announcement of a hiring freeze for government employees is popular with many. It is to remain in effect, apparently, until the government workforce declines “sufficiently.”

I was recruited to be a Foreign Service Officer by the U.S. Department of State in 1990 after an earlier hiring freeze was lifted.

Part of my job in U.S. missions overseas was the processing of requests for temporary visas to visit the United States. Citizens of other countries apply by the millions to travel to the U.S. for tourism, business, and study as well as for more specialized interests like investment. After the hiring freeze, visa interviewers were understaffed.

During the summer of 2001, the visa section of the embassy in the country where I worked sometimes processed seven or eight hundred visas a day. Just two officers were available to interview and approve or reject their travel to the U.S. Obviously, they had minimal time for careful interviewing.

Around this time, nineteen young men received visas, the majority of them from the country where I worked, to study at flight schools in the United States. These young men later hijacked airliners and plowed them into the World Trade towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Another crashed in Pennsylvania due to heroic actions of passengers on the plane.

Hurried processing may have contributed to those visas, though other factors certainly played a part. Anyone not closely associated with visa processing has difficulty understanding the toll exacted by too few workers for the jobs assigned.

The same is true for many government agencies that protect us at home as well as overseas. Sometime deadly results only show up years later.

I suppose the country saved money from fewer government employees that summer of 2001, though.

Don’t Drink the Water

In several less developed countries where I lived overseas, we had water systems of our own, not trusting the local supply.

In another place, I would wake in the night and hear the guards making their nightly checks of our yard and gates. In other countries, we lived in guarded compounds.

On the other hand, when we lived in Canada, we lived in an apartment of our choosing, with no extra security. We drank water from the tap.

What causes the difference between the two types of nations?

In too many developing countries, corruption means bribes must be paid for getting anything done. Infrastructure is poor or non-existent, schools are inadequate or not available for the majority of children, the water is contaminated, and armed thugs threaten the general population. Sometimes the armed thugs are the police.

Back in my own country, I don’t have private security. I depend on the local police and/or public emergency vehicles to arrive after an accident, acute illness, or possible crime. I drink the local water. When my children were growing up, I sent them to public schools.

I have never minded paying adequate taxes for these public services. Yet taxes often have a bad name. A campaign promise to never raise taxes or even to cut them is often used to secure votes.

Lately, parents in some states have brought suit in courts to require more adequate funding of public schools. Mental health services are proving woefully inadequate. Bridges need to be repaired. Yet, legislators are elected on promises never to raise taxes.

Meanwhile, some of the wealthy pay little or no taxes. We are told we must bribe them with more tax cuts in order to keep our jobs.

We get what we pay for, including the regulations that protect us with oversight of government functions. We can choose not to pay for adequate health services, drug treatment programs, quality education, clean water, infrastructure, and regulations to protect us from wealthy cabals.

Or, we can go the way of those countries with private security forces, crumbling roads, contaminated water, and healthcare and education only for the wealthy.

The Last Line of Defense

According to reports, hundreds of U.S. State Department employees are signing a “dissent” cable.” This dissent cable is a communication to the acting head of the State Department indicating disapproval of the recently signed order by President Trump halting the processing of refugees into the United States.

Many of these signers have worked overseas with refugees and immigrants to the U.S. They are aware of our honored place in the world as guardians of the unwanted (“wretched refuse” as the Statue of Liberty proclaims) from other nations, including the grandfather of President Trump.

A dissent cable allows the expression of views differing from the official one of any political administration, not just the present one. One of the more recent ones dissented from President Obama’s decisions on Syria. It supports the discussion and frankness that a democracy, at its best, encourages.

White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said dissenters should “get with the program or they should go.” In reaction, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, has pointed out in a letter (January 31, 2017) to President Trump: “The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual prohibits reprisal or disciplinary action against anyone who uses the Dissent Channel.”

Laura Rosenberger, a retired State Department officer penned a plea to career officials in the U.S. government to stay in their jobs. (“Career Officials: You Are the Last Line of Defense Against Trump,” January 30, 2017, Foreign Policy)

Many State Department officers have the experience and education to find jobs with higher salaries and less hassle. Please don’t, Rosenberger says: “Your jobs have never been more important. You are patriots who work for the American people, largely out of sight and with little recognition or glory—and your job remains to keep them safe and secure, as you have always worked to do.”

Wall Street Is Doing Well; What About Main Street?

The bull market is setting records. As might be expected, putting one of their own into the White House appears to have excited Wall Street. Good times are here again, at least for them.

What about Main Street? Some on Main Street are excited about Wall Street elites replacing government elites. Surely Wall Street will look after them better than government elites? Of course, wasn’t it Wall Street who came up with the idea of those bundled mortgages that contributed to the Great Recession?

Some on Main Street are concerned about losing health care. Various plans have been floated to replace the Affordable Care Act. One is to replace it with some kind of catastrophic health insurance. Individuals would pay their own health costs until they reached a certain amount, then catastrophic health care would kick in for them.

The problem is how much the person would have to pay and how well they could afford this amount.

Members of Congress, who will decide on healthcare, could probably afford such a plan. For someone on minimum wage, it could be disastrous.

Whatever replacement is finally decided on, members of Congress will most likely have access to adequate healthcare coverage.

I don’t object to members of Congress having their healthcare. I don’t imagine Wall Street has to worry about healthcare, either, which is fine. I just don’t see why Main Street should have to worry about it.

Leadership Is Not About You

Prudence Bushnell was the ambassador when the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was bombed by terrorists in 1998. Over 200 people were killed. The majority were nearby Kenyan civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Forty-six of Bushnell’s colleagues, Kenyan and American, died in the embassy itself.

“Leadership is not about you,” Bushnell wrote recently in The Foreign Service Journal, (January/February 2017 issue “Notes to the New Administration.”)

“The lesson that practicing leadership means getting over yourself to focus on others came as a whack upside the head a few weeks after the attack. I was asked to speak at an unexpected remembrance ceremony for a beloved colleague. I was burned out from funerals, memorial services, anger, and sadness. Physically and emotionally exhausted, I actually felt a stab of resentment. Whack: This is not about me.”

Some of the employees of the United States government that President Trump will supervise have, like Bushnell, seen what it means to sacrifice for their country: military personnel who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, Foreign Service officers who have been through bombing attacks, intelligence officers who risk lives to keep the U.S. government informed of dangers, and a lot of ordinary employees who come to work every day proud to serve as administrators and organizers of the vast amount of information and decisions required to serve over 325 million citizens of their country.

President Trump, it’s not about you. It’s about them and the citizens they—and you—serve. You are a servant.

Harry S. Truman, an Example for Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump, President-elect as of this writing, due to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States in two days, tends to issue orders.

Some have applauded Trump’s style, believing that Mr. Trump will operate the U.S. government with the same authoritative style that he used in ordering around employees in his companies.

Unfortunately, a couple of centuries of government under the Constitution, its amendments, and laws passed by the U.S. Congress may stand in his way.

President Harry S. Truman, very much a strong executive, serves as an example.

In 1952, in order to avoid a strike by American steel company employees, President Truman ordered the seizure of the steel companies. The President argued that the strike would affect the ability of the United States to wage war. (The country was in the middle of the Korean War at the time.)

The employees sued the government. The government lost its case when the Supreme Court found that, in seizing the mills, the president had exceeded the authority given him by the U.S. Constitution.

One of the Justices, Robert Jackson, wrote in upholding the court finding:

“With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.”

Why Buy Health Insurance or Pay a Fee?

Healthy people should buy health insurance or pay a fee for two reasons. One reason is that good health is not a given, even for those folks who keep their weight down and exercise. Accidents and unplanned illnesses happen.

Also, the expenses of those who become ill or injured and have no insurance are paid by you and me and other taxpayers when whatever savings they have are exhausted.

Another reason that all should buy health insurance or pay a fee is for the same reason that people with no children should pay taxes to support public education.

Our country works better if we have an educated population. An uneducated workforce drags down the entire country.

The country also works better if we have a healthy population.

For selfish reasons as well as unselfish ones, everybody should have health insurance–or pay a fee for not doing so.

Corporate Boss Versus Public Servant

The Economist, in a recent issue (December 10, 2016) , pointed to signs that Donald Trump’s presidency would follow a business model.

Leaders of corporations are not elected by the people. In a sense, company heads are dictators, as far as the everyday running of the company is concerned. They may answer to stockholders, but for most businesses, profit is king. Only very enlightened CEO’s believe that they exist primarily to serve their customers.

But if the government of the United States, as Abraham Lincoln famously said, is “of the people, by the people, for the people,” it exists to serve. It exists for the people, not for the leaders or their political parties.

Trump, in his business dealings, can hire and fire at will. He decides, and his companies do what he orders.

Can Trump adjust to being a public servant? Can he, for example, with no experience in airplane building, order Boeing to come up with a cheaper airplane? Can he discriminate based on religion, even though the U.S. Constitution forbids it?

It will be interesting to see if Trump intends to use the dictator model or the constitutional model as his guide.

The Cost of Saving Money on Health Care

Grays Harbor County, in my home state of Washington, cast the majority of its votes for Donald Trump in the recent presidential election. According to Danny Westneat, columnist for The Seattle Times, it’s the first time in almost a century that the county voted Republican instead of Democratic.

According to state unemployment rates for October, 2016, Grays Harbor County had an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, considerably higher than the state rate of 5.4 percent. So perhaps high unemployment encouraged a Trump vote, as it appears to have done in other parts of the nation.

Westneat quoted some interesting facts about Grays Harbor County. Several years ago nineteen percent of the population had no health insurance. Today, mainly because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the rate of uninsured dropped to nine percent. One in five adults in the country signed up for it.

If the Trump administration abolishes the ACA, as Trump has said it will do on several occasions, what will happen to those people who have gained coverage?

In a more recent column (The Seattle Times, December 12, 2016), Westneat chronicles the case of a young woman with diabetes and fibromyalgia, which causes severe muscle and joint pains. Before the ACA, she often lacked money for medications to treat the pain and missed work.

When the ACA became law, the woman, no longer barred by her previous medical conditions, signed up. She was able to afford the payments because of the subsidy that came with the plan. Eventually, with her chronic conditions treated, she returned to school and received a graduate degree from Seattle Pacific University. She’s now interning in her chosen field.

What happens if this woman and others lose their medical coverage? What if their chronic conditions go untreated?

Saving money by abolishing continuing health care will cost more in the long run. And that’s only the financial cost.