Indivisibles; Spirit of America; fixing healthcare

Indivisibles

In response to Richard Greene’s Sunday column (“Demonstration in Fort Worth had signs of Obama influence”), the emerging shadow government he mentioned is our group, the Indivisibles.

No doubt President Obama is on our side. However, to my knowledge he had no part in starting the Indivisibles group or in the fact that it is growing and may never stop.

We, the Indivisibles, are making sure President Trump’s agenda does not destroy America — and even the rest of the world — with his tyrannical edicts, racist maneuvers and leanings toward dictatorship.

The people not listening clearly to Trump are Greene and the rest of the Republicans.

Spirit of America

Bud Kennedy's hit piece about me (“Trump backer’s slurs, foul talk: Is this the ‘Spirit of America’?” Wednesday) proves what President Trump warned: The media really are the enemy of the American people.

Kennedy created fake news by sensationalizing my position that private organizations should have the right to determine their own rules for membership as some sort of right-wing quackery, when a majority of Americans share my views!

And, sin of sins, I dared to type a word into my Facebook that's not on the left's politically correct list.

More importantly, Kennedy's column suggests strongly that Trump-supporting homosexuals are not welcome at the Spirit of America Rally, when nothing could be further from the truth.

A gay Trump supporter and myself may not agree 100 percent, but we will put our differences aside in support of the president.

By working together, I'm not condoning my fellow Trump supporter's sexuality and he or she isn't condoning my religious views.

We are putting our smaller differences aside so we can work together for the greater good. This is basically the same relational dynamic that has allowed the Log Cabin Republicans to co-exist peacefully within the Republican Party for years.

Fixing healthcare

President Trump was spot on when he said, “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.”

It is complicated, but there are solutions. There are two fatal flaws in the current system:

▪ The first is fee-for-service reimbursement, in which the more healthcare that’s delivered, the more money changes hands.

Health systems make more. Consumers, employers and governments spend more.

▪ The second flaw is national financing and management from Medicare, large insurers and large employers.

Local healthcare can’t be managed from Baltimore, Washington or New York. Healthcare is local, and it has to be managed locally like water, waste, roads, schools, etc.

The solution is to design and implement healthcare strategies around local community healthcare budgeting, where community risk is shared by health systems, governments and employers.

We can salvage both Medicare and employer plans through new and big thinking.

This story was originally published March 1, 2017 at 5:31 PM with the headline "Indivisibles; Spirit of America; fixing healthcare."