THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

By Robert P. Bomboy

JULY 30, 2017

            A long time ago, in 1710, a famous German philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz, wrestling with the question of why evil exists, said this is the best of all possible worlds.

            In his own time and ever since, the idea that ours is the "best of all possible worlds" has caught a lot of pushback. From Voltaire, also a famous philosopher, to Bertram Russell, legions of wise men have undercut Leibniz: Voltaire sniffed that the world contains an amount of suffering too great to justify such optimism; Russell, like Mr. Spock, simply said it was illogical, Captain.

In the Senate of the United States, the Republican Majority Leader, that astonishing thinker Mitch McConnell, laughs at the very idea. Working in the dark, with no one to help him, he actually put together his own version of Frankenstein's monster, the Republican Unaffordable Care Act that thrashed about in the Senate halls until this week. McConnell is not concerned about the best of all possible worlds. To the very end, he didn't care if  his abominable creation was evil.

It can certainly be argued that the people who gave birth to Obamacare were seeking to do something good for the American people.

If you look back before 2010 when Obamacare became law, millions of Americans at that time were living, dying, and suffering in the cruel world that Voltaire described. People routinely got kicked off their health insurance for getting pregnant, having a pre-existing condition, or losing their jobs. And then no one would sell them health insurance. That happened to someone I know. Many people had bad health insurance plans that imposed all kinds of cruel restrictions. Sixty million Americans had no health insurance at all; and, as a result, many people lost their homes, went bankrupt, and suffered other hardships trying to pay for the treatment of their illnesses. We were one of the very few industrialized nations that had no basic guarantee of health care.

Since 2010, twenty million Americans have bought health insurance coverage under Obamacare. The number of America's uninsured dropped to a record low 8.6 percent last year. That's something good. Put that up against the lies and bitter propaganda that Donald Trump Twitters out every day and screams at his rallies to the very people who will suffer if his Frankenstein had passed in Congress.

Many people don't know that Obamacare made good changes in every aspect of our healthcare.

A lot of our readers are retired, like me. Did you know that, under Obamacare, 57 million of us on Medicare now pay less for our Medicare coverage and for our prescription drugs. For us, Obamacare has meant lower premiums, deductibles, and cost-sharing in Medicare and is slowly eliminating the infamous "donut hole" in our prescription-drug coverage. Typical Medicare patients pay $700 less in premiums and cost-sharing than they did before Obamacare. And since Obamacare came to be, in 2010, at least 11 million Medicare patients have saved, on average, more than $2,100 per person on prescription drugs. We don't see it. We don't connect it to Obamacare. But it's the truth.

Many people get free mammograms, colonoscopies, and cholesterol tests under Obamacare. And people with pre-existing conditions, like the hardworking family I know, can no longer be turned away.

            There's a lot more if you look back at my previous columns on the free blog of saveaffordablecare.blogspot.com. It may not be the best of all possible worlds, but the evil that was implicit in Mitch McConnell's Frankenstein Act was shocking by comparison.

            An objective analysis, by the Congressional Budget Office, of the six Frankenstein plans made the evil clear:

·       All six would have torn health insurance away from millions of Americans - the health insurance that Obamacare had permitted them to buy - (five of the six plans that went through the House of Representatives and the Senate would have cut off 20 million people; the sixth proposed plan would have cut off 30 million).

·       All six Republican proposals made deep cuts in Medicaid (which helps not only the poor but also middle-class people in nursing homes and thousands upon thousands fighting drug addiction). The partial-repeal bill in the Senate that was killed, finally, during this past week would have stripped 19 million men, women, and children off Medicaid by cutting $842 million from the Medicaid program.

Back in the 1980's a rock group called Iron Maiden, cribbing Shakespeare, sang, "The evil that men do lives on and on."

Three Republican heroes who voted with the Democrats at two o'clock in the morning - two women and a dying veteran - (along with thousands and thousands of American citizens) kept that from happening.

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HEROES STAND UP TO OPPOSE TRUMPCARE

By Robert P. Bomboy

JULY 23, 2017

            Lies. Lies. Lies.

            I've always enjoyed the movies of the actor Sean Connery, not only the James Bond thrillers, but many others. There's a line in one of them, The Hunt for Red October, that leaves me nodding my head. A White House official admits: "I'm a politician, when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops."

            Trying to force his fellow senators to bend to his will and pass the Unaffordable Care Act, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, tried every trick in the book, twisting and turning, strongarming and threatening the 51 Republicans under his sway.

            And withal, he lied, and lied, and lied.

            He and his Republican allies - including Donald Trump, as candidate and president - had spent years stirring their witches' cauldron of falsehoods about Obamacare.

They said it was written behind closed doors, even though it wasn't. It was McConnell and his henchmen who locked themselves in a closet, wrote their Frankenstein Act in stygian darkness, rejected any public or expert participation, refused to let Senate Democrats see it, and then were astounded when even their own Republican senators wouldn't stand for it.

McConnell said Obamacare was a Big-Government takeover, when it was actually a combination of conservative and liberal ideas.

He and Trump said Obamacare was "collapsing, imploding, exploding," when in fact it has mostly worked well and has been successful.

Now Trump says he's "bored" with healthcare, and O'Connell met a dead end when he said he wanted to repeal Obamacare completely and not replace it with anything - which would leave 32 million of us (one in ten of all us Americans) without any form of health insurance.

            Senator McConnell, you've had your fling. As a Kentucky Colonel you've been bullheaded, and racist, about Obamacare. Now it's time to be a statesman, to look at Obamacare with the eyes of a statesman, as a legislator whose true role is to work with other legislators - Republicans and Democrats - to safeguard the welfare of all Americans.

            It's time now to hold dispassionate hearings with the true aim of improving Obamacare. Its problems are eminently fixable. If you hadn't been so hard-nosed, you would have seen a possible answer staring you in the face in the form of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by a Republican president, George W. Bush.

            That Medicare law went after the same issue that is besetting the so-called Obamacare "marketplaces" - where people without insurance can be able to buy coverage from private insurers.

             

In 2002 the government wasn't paying insurers enough to keep them selling new Medicare Advantage coverage in the marketplace: the number of Medicare Advantage plans dropped by 50 percent, and the number of enrollees fell too. When the Medicare Advantage Act raised payments to insurers, new companies and new coverage came into the marketplace.

            Bringing Republicans and Democrats together, with bipartisanship, to look at the example of the Medicare Modernization Act may be a place to start over again.

            Certainly the Senate showed you the road to perdition this week: With four senators saying they opposed the bill (more than enough to kill it) and 10 others voicing deep concerns about it, you couldn't call an outright vote.

The Republican heroes I mentioned in previous columns did stand up: Senators Shelley Capito, Dr. Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, Lisa Murkoski, and Ron Portman. Public concern, Twitter, emails, letters, and phone calls helped to give them strength.

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SENATOR McCONNELL'S RUBIK'S CUBE

By Robert P. Bomboy

JULY 16, 2017

            We've lived in the age of the Rubik's Cube. Since it broke the surface of our imaginations in 1980, with its 43 quintillion configurations, it has conquered the world. Its six colors - white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow - have driven millions to distraction. Only one in 8,000 can solve it.

            For Mitch McConnell, putting his Rubik's Cube together has been easier than making his Frankenstein health care bill come alive in the Senate. As majority leader, McConnell has been known for years as a master prestidigitator who can pull elephants out of his hat. But the Senate's Unaffordable Care Act has been too big an abomination, so far, even for him to get it passed.

Poor man - he's been twisting and turning his Rubik's Cube night and day, working his fingers to the bone, trying every trick his mother ever taught him, but he still can't get his fellow senators to swallow the garbage.

For McConnell, who is the most powerful man in Congress, this impasse must be incredibly frustrating and humiliating. He acknowledged as much this week when he postponed the Senate's traditional summer recess until the third week of August.

That, in itself, is a cheap trick, the prestidigitator pulling it out of his hat to make his fellow senators sweat. Sweat literally - Washington is not a nice place to be in the summer. Before air conditioning, the old-time drumbeaters would keep their rowers at the oars all summer to get what they wanted. McConnell is grinning, "How'd ya like a taste of this?"

As one insider said this week, "It's a message to the Republicans — the beatings will continue until you agree to pass Trumpcare, and you can't have vacation, either."

Talk about waterboarding! This is only one of the strongarm tactics McConnell and his henchmen are using. The really rough stuff is going on behind the scenes.

Like what? Like pinning a guy up against the Senate's marble walls and shouting in his face, "You're up for re-election next year, y'know, Bud! You come across on this or I'll see to it that you can't raise enough money to drop in the slot of a parking meter!"

Or, "You got to put your principles in your pocket young lady! What committee did I put you on? Appropriations? How'd you like to be on the subcommittee for Guam?

The Kentucky colonel, of course, has a sunny side too.

You can hear him smiling: "Y'know, my friend, I have a plum tree. I understand your state needs some real public works. Remember how nice the Tennessee Valley Authority was? Nice little project, wasn't it? Why, we can make that happen for you too."

But if they hesitate, he'll pull his evil horns out and tell them, "This is why they call it politics. If you're not for me, you're against me. You got to hold your nose and vote!"

It's all to get those 50 votes. Fifty votes and their friend the vice president will break the tie, and they can go to the White House rose garden to get the same laughs and backslapping the House of Representatives got when they passed their own version of the Frankenstein Act. That was the one that even the president called "mean."

It would take only three votes - the votes against the bill of three courageous Republicans whose consciences can't stand the thought that this Frankenstein Act, if it passed, would mean the deaths next year of 17,000 men, women, and children who would not have died if they had Obamacare.

As I've said before, you can help stop that and send McConnell back to his Rubik's Cube. Don't bother calling our Republican senator, Senator Toomey. McConnell has Toomey in his pocket. He doesn't have the courage to stand up.

But these six senators could turn the tide against this terrible injustice. Send them a quick email or a twitter and say, Vote against the Senate healthcare bill:

·       Lamar Alexander:            Twitter? @SenAlexander  - Email? Google Lamar Alexander and use his email contact form.

·       Shelley Moore Capito: Twitter? @SenCapito - Email? Google Senator Shelley Capito and use her email contact form.

·       Dr. Bill Cassidy: Email? Google Senator Bill Cassidy, scroll down to the word "CONTACT," see the question, "How Can I Help You?" and tell him to vote no.

·       Susan Collins: Twitter? @SenatorCollins - Email? Google Senator Susan Collins and click Contact Senator Susan Collins.

·       Dean Heller: Twitter? @SenDeanHeller - Email? Google Senator Dean Heller and click Email Me.

·       Lisa Murkowski: Twitter? @lisamurkowski - Google Senator Lisa Murkowski and click Contact Lisa.

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THE SENATE ROGUES GALLERY

By Robert P. Bomboy

JULY 9, 2017

            It's time to place the blame.

I've been reading a book called the Moonstone by the nineteenth century author Wilkie Collins, who was a contemporary of Charles Dickens. How many times have you said - or heard someone say- "I'm at a loss for words!" People a hundred or two hundred year ago were never at a loss for words. They called a spade a spade; for instance, in Wilkie Collins' classic, a woman cries out: "You coward! You mean, miserable, heartless, coward!"

That's what I want to say to the Republicans in Congress: "Shame on you! You cowards! You mean, miserable, heartless, cowards!"

            Those awful words might have been tailor-made and cut-to-fit the Republicans in the House of Representatives who created their "mean" Unaffordable Care Act ("mean," that's what President Trump called it) and the Republican senators who are now doing their darnedest to repeal Obamacare, savagely cut Medicaid, and leave 23 million Americans like you and me without health insurance for their families and children.

How many of us, from our childhoods, have admired Robin Hood, the knight of Sherwood Forest who opposed tyranny by robbing from the rich to give to the poor? These senators are no Robin Hoods. They are the opposite: rich men and women - two thirds of them, including our Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey, are millionaires - who are robbing from the poor and the middle class to put nearly a trillion dollars into their own pockets and the pockets of other millionaires and billionaires.

            Do you know that a trillion dollars is a thousand billions?

            They fudge it over by calling the money "tax cuts," but it's real money they're taking for themselves. The "tax cuts" are for the rich: if all 52 Republican senators can stomach it, they and their millionaire friends will be nearly a trillion dollars richer.

            Beyond that, they will have made millions and millions of Americans worse off, poorer, sicker, seeing their children, their wives, and their families desperately ill.

            So what do you call people who are willing to do this? If it were Bernie Madoff or other criminals we wouldn't hesitate a moment to say that they were unprincipled scoundrels, heartless wretches, crooks, cheats, thieves, rogues of the worst kind.

          When it comes to this heartless bill to repeal Obamacare, the Republican Senate is a Rogues Gallery. Picture the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Pat Toomey, and the other Republican millionaires lounging poolside at the mansions of their gated communities over this past Fourth of July holiday, as Bernie Madoff once did. Picture them scheming to grab the 51 or 52 votes they need to pass their ugly Frankenstein out of the Senate so it can join the "mean" House bill on the way to the president and another glorious Rose Garden celebration with all the laughter and back-slapping at out-foxing and cheating the American people once again.

It will take only three good Republicans to turn the tables on them, three heroes willing to put the good of the people above the dishonest and unprincipled desires of their party in the Senate.

Pray God that three heroes will stand up.

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TRUMP AND THE SCANDALS OF THE HARDING ADMINISTRATION

By Robert P. Bomboy

JULY 2, 2017

You may have learned about it long ago, perhaps in school. You may have heard about it somewhere: Teapot Dome. You may know that the scandal wasn’t about an actual teapot.

            No one alive today was old enough to vote when Warren G. Harding was elected president in 1920, so, until Donald Trump became president this year, no one alive today had seen criminal scandals comparable to the scandals of the Harding Administration.

            Like Trump, Harding was a president determined to revoke the good works of his predecessor. He personally overturned or permitted Congress to reverse the policies of President Woodrow Wilson and approved tax cuts for the rich. Like Trump, Harding lived the high life, and liked it; but, although he had character flaws, he was not a liar. He lived in a more honorable time, unlike our President Pinocchio.

As president, Warren Harding stumbled into a chain of events that set him up to be one of the worst presidents in our history. He surrounded himself with friends, cronies, and political supporters who were unqualified for the jobs they held. Just a few years after World War I, his choice to head the Veterans Bureau was a man he’d met while vacationing, who later engaged in a massive swindle.

We judge our presidents by the people they put in power, and what they do. "Harding’s choices across the board were perhaps the worst in American history,” says Princeton historian Kevin Kruse.

He appointed a platoon of corrupt officials, including his Interior Department secretary, Albert Fall, who created the infamous Teapot Dome scandal and became the first cabinet secretary to be put in jail. Fall leased oil-rich government lands in Wyoming to private companies, in return for personal loans and bribes, and was found guilty of corruption.

If you saw the Boardwalk Empire series on TV, you may recall HBO's portrayal of the real-life character Harry Daugherty, Harding's Attorney General, who was running criminal schemes that made him rich.

            There are a lot of similarities between Harding's bad choices and Trump's. He's appointed a woman named Lynne Patton, who organized golf tournaments at his hotels and planned Eric Trump's wedding, to start next week as the head of the New York and New Jersey offices of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The fact that Patton has no experience in housing policy made New York Congresswoman Grace Meng tell Trump: "This is not The Apprentice; the federal government is not your personal patronage system.”

            He appointed his friend and onetime golf caddy, Daniel Scavino, Jr., to head the White House Office of Social Media, where he has already drawn a warning from federal authorities for violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from engaging in electoral politics (Scavino on Twitter advocated the defeat of a Michigan congressman).

            Perhaps never before have we had such chaos in the White House. Other Trump appointees and associates are now under suspicion, as is Trump himself. The FBI is investigating him for possible obstruction of justice.

            Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel appointed by the Justice Department, is investigating Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his business dealings.

            The FBI is investigating Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, Trump's National Security Adviser, who had to resign after lying about his suspicious contacts with Russian officials.

Also because of his contacts with Russian officials, former Senator Jeff Sessions, whom Trump appointed U.S. Attorney General, has been forced to separate or recuse himself from involvement in any investigations of Russian tampering with the 2016 presidential election, because of a possible conflict of interest.

FBI agents have questioned Trump associate Carter Page at length about allegations that he may have acted as a kind of go-between for Russia and Trump's 2016 election campaign. 

Trump's campaign chairman until last August, Paul Manafort, is the focus of several inquiries - including an FBI investigation - looking into his business activities, his failure to file foreign lobbying disclosures, and possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russia.

You'll find that the list goes on. Where it will end no one knows, but the smoke is becoming a forest fire.

President Harding said of his appointees: "They're the ones that keep me walking the floors at night." I understand that President Trump doesn't sleep much either.

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SUBTERFUGE AND THE GOLDEN RULE

By Robert P. Bomboy

JUNE 18, 2017

            Subterfuge! While everybody in the world has been focused on what Trump said or didn't say. And while the same everybodies have been listening to find out what Comey knew or didn't know, the big boys in Congress have been busy as fleas in a frying pan.

            It's been a drama, a three-ring circus that we've never seen or suspected before, and the pundits, the talking heads, have been electric to say there's no other show in the world right now; nothing really important, except this show. Congress hasn't been doing anything . . .  you savvy?

            It's made a powerful smokescreen. In a previous column I said the Senate was growing mold, which always grows best in the dark. The House of Representatives has been busy too.

            While no one was watching, House Republicans tore the insides out of the rules enacted after the Great Recession - when the banks almost went bust, made life savings worthless, and foreclosed on nine million American homeowners.

            Subterfuge? Would you laugh or cry if I told you that this awful Republican bill is called the Financial Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs Act. Republican enthusiasts call it the Choice Act, for short. Congresswoman Maxine Waters has a bitter and better name for it: the Wrong Choice Act.

The vote to pass the bill, 233 to 186, was all Big Business and no Democrats; only one Republican voted against it, Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina.

The 2010 law they were gutting was the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. That title should tell you something right up front. After the Wall Street crash in 2007-2008 the American people wanted, on a platter, the heads of the financial wizards and big bankers who had caused everything. We were screaming: "Jail them! Jail them!"

The response was more measured. Even so, the Dodd-Frank Act - named for Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, its joint authors in the Senate and the House - was the most sweeping overhaul of our financial regulations since the reforms during and after the Great Depression in the 1930s. It put teeth in federal regulations to strengthen accountability and transparency in our financial system; to end the lax "too big to fail" gimmees that propped up the big banks during the 2007-2008 crash; to protect us taxpayers by ending bank bailouts; and to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices.

The banks and the financial wizards hated it and lobbied night and day against it, until President Trump came along and wiped away consumer-protection regulations of every kind. Among the first of his infamous executive orders, back on February 3, was a blunt directive to order a "review and hold" on the Dodd-Frank Act. The House, while everybody was looking the other way, sucked up to the big-money boys

"Every promise of Dodd-Frank has been broken," crowed Congressman Jeb Hensarling when his bill crawled out of the House. His misbegotten child gives President Trump the power to fire - for any or no reason - the watchdog heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and also the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two home-mortgage giants whose lax policies were at the very heart of the 2007-2008 debacle. We've seen how he likes to fire people.

Beyond that, the Hensarling bill gives Congress the budget power to de-fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau entirely - something President Trump would love to see.

In the Senate things are just as bad. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, has rammed through his repeal of Obamacare without hearings or any opportunity for the public to see his rotten bill or comment on it. Organizations that wanted to testify and oppose the bill were:

·                            American Academy of Pediatrics

·                            American Association of Retired Persons

·                            American College of Physicians

·                            American Hospital Association

·                            American Medical Association

·                            American Nurses Association

·                            Families USA

·                            National Nurses United

·                            National Physicians Alliance

McConnell's goal is to pass his repeal bill before July 4 so that he and his Senate friends will have clear consciences when they go on their summer vacations. How can anybody go to the beach and enjoy themselves if they've just passed a bill that will take away the health insurance of 23 million Americans, putting those families and their children at the risk of illness and death? Health care experts are estimating that, if this terrible bill actually becomes law, in its first year alone 17,000 Americans will die who otherwise would have lived. Can you live with that? I can't.

McConnell and his buddies are millionaires and then some. It's the rich - the top one percent - who want this repeal to pass. Obamacare isn't a freebie. The people who get it pay for it. What they get is the right to have insurance they can pay for.

What the rich don't like is that Obamacare makes their taxes higher. Isn't that too bad? That one percent have millions and billions. The Trump boom in the stock market this spring has put even more millions in their pockets. They have tax cuts coming out the kazoo - most finagle it so they don't pay any taxes. But they want more - always more! Even if it means that little boys and girls will die.

Our Republican senator, Pat Toomey, a millionaire three times over like most of the senators, will vote with Mitch McConnell. Our Democratic senator, Bob Casey, will vote against him. All the Democrats will vote against this abominable Frankenstein of a bill.

It will take only three Republican heroes to stand up with them, possibly from among these seven good people:

·       Lamar Alexander:            Twitter? @SenAlexander  - Email? Google Lamar Alexander and use his email contact form.

·       Shelley Moore Capito: Twitter? @SenCapito - Email? Google Senator Shelley Capito and use her email contact form.

·       Dr. Bill Cassidy: Email? Google Senator Bill Cassidy, scroll down to the word "CONTACT," see the question, "How Can I Help You?" and tell him not to vote yes.

·       Susan Collins: Twitter? @SenatorCollins - Email? Google Senator Susan Collins and click Contact Senator Susan Collins.

·       Dean Heller: Twitter? @SenDeanHeller - Email? Google Senator Dean Heller and click Email Me.

·       Lisa Murkowski: Twitter? @lisamurkowski - Google Senator Lisa Murkowski and click Contact Lisa.

In a previous column I listed eight Republicans, but Rob Portman of Ohio has caved, as they often do.

            You can even send a message to Senator Toomey: @SenToomey on Twitter.

Tell him to save the lives of the little boys and girls, and their fathers and mothers too. That is the Golden Rule.

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BUYING GROCERIES FOR DIABETIC PATIENTS

By Robert P. Bomboy

The New Yorker magazine noted recently that the Geisinger Health System is giving free groceries to diabetic patients across its far-flung territory.

I don't know how many readers also subscribe to the New Yorker, but it's one of the nation's best sources of honest reporting and news analysis, much as the Saturday Evening Post was for our grandparents and great-grandparents from 1897 to 1963.

Geisinger has many diabetic patients. Diabetes can be passed down through families genetically and because mothers, fathers, and children eat too many unhealthful foods and not enough healthful ones.

The area that Geisinger serves has been historically prone to diabetes. Throughout the middle of Pennsylvania, many patients live in towns and villages that don't have grocery stores or supermarkets. Families buy the foods they eat in convenience stores or low-price outlets, a practice that feeds unhealthful diets.

Geisinger has sought to change that situation by giving diabetics healthful foods through a hospital pharmacy. Its first Fresh Food Pharmacy has opened at the Geisinger Shamokin Hospital. With a Geisinger doctor's prescription for it, patients who have diabetes or diabetic family members can get, for free, fresh vegetables, high-protein and low-fat meats, non-fattening flour, and other food products.

Giving patients and their families healthful foods costs Geisinger $2,000 a year for each patient, but it says it's saving an average of $24,000 per patient because fewer need kidney dialysis, eye surgeries, and care for other complications that diabetes causes. The diabetics eating better have seen their average weight and blood pressure fall too.

The New Yorker's financial correspondent, Adam Davidson, pointed out that - as might be expected - the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare isn't looking at cost-saving experiments like this at all. "The health-care bill recently passed by the House of Representatives would transfer money to the rich (in the form of a tax cut) and slash Medicaid," Davidson says accurately.

The House bill will strip millions of us of our health insurance coverage, destroy protections for mothers, fathers, and children with pre-existing conditions, and cut billions of dollars from Medicaid, which is providing the wherewithal to treat and protect 63,000 Pennsylvanians against death from drug overdoses.

Drug addiction is epidemic in Pennsylvania; of the 50 states, we are the sixth highest state for drug overdoses, higher than New York and New Jersey. A huge part of Obamacare expanded Medicaid, providing money to prevent overdose deaths here. As Governor Tom Wolfe has said: "Access to treatment through Medicaid is keeping Pennsylvanians alive who might otherwise face overdoses or worse.”

The House bill snatched that life raft away. I expect the same to be true of the Senate bill. No one knows, because the millionaires there - including our Republican Senator Pat Toomey - have kept their proposed repeal of Obamacare completely hidden from us, the American people.

As I wrote in a previous column, Toomey and his millionaire buddies haven't listened to anyone who might want to protest what they're doing - not a single hearing, not a single person or expert. Even the Republicans in Congress didn't know what was in the Senate bill until Thursday when Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, showed a rough draft to his Republican colleagues, but not to the Democrats. He wants a vote on his Frankenstein next week.

Millions of people are outraged at what the Senate is doing.

I'm protesting and I hope you will too.

Call, write, or email Senator Toomey. His Twitter handle is: @SenToomey. Tell him you're not rich and you won't stand for this anymore.

If only three Republicans will vote against this blindfold Senate bill, it won't pass. It's possible that there are three real heroes among these six I've identified. Please find their emails or Twitter handles and reach out to them: Sens. Lamar Alexander, Shelley Moore Capito, Dr. Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, and Lisa Murkowski.

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A $20 BILLION CHECK FOR A TRUMP CRONY

By Robert P. Bomboy

On May's billion-dollar overseas junket, President Trump quietly squeezed out a really rotten political plum for one of his cronies.

            During the president's visit in-country, his longtime crony Stephen Schwarzman picked up a $20 billion check from Saudi Arabia to take control of our tunnels, bridges, highways, and drinking-water resources. Schwarzman, chief executive of a multi-billion-dollar Wall Street tiger called the Blackstone Group, also has Trump's ear as chairman of his Strategic and Policy Forum, where Big Business gets to put in its two cents - and a lot more.

Schwarzman is a back-door neighbor of Trump's Mar-a-Lago plantation in sunny Florida, and the two have been doing more there than kicking the golf ball around on Trump's weekends away from the White House.

Blackstone has a long history of taking advantage of working families - from profiting off the 2008 U.S. housing crash that repossessed nine million mortgaged American homes, to fighting worker efforts for decent livelihoods.

Its move to buy up some of our cities' and states’ most important infrastructure assets (highways, tunnels, and bridges) at the expense of our communities is no surprise.

When our infrastructure is bought up this way, cities and states lose out on the income that would traditionally go toward funding public services, like low-income housing and education. Instead, taxpayers are forced to subsidize billionaires and corporations who are raking in the dough.

            Traditionally, cities and states have built highways, tunnels, and bridges by selling municipal bonds and using earnings from the bonds for public projects. Sales of these municipal bonds amount to more than $3.7 trillion.

            This Blackstone deal could suck up those earnings and hit taxpayers with high tolls and user fees. “Why would we take some of the resources we have, hand them away to Wall Street, and give them control over the assets to do with as they want for 20, or 30, or 40, or 50 years?” asks Donald Cohen of the anti-privatization group In the Public Interest [CQ]. It's a good question.

The states and cities whose infrastructure will be involved in Saudi-Blackstone deals will need to look carefully for any loopholes.

In Virginia, a project to expand the Hampton Roads car and truck tunnel is costing more than expected because of a no-competition clause negotiated by a Swedish construction company and an Australian financier. If toll revenues are lower than contracted, the state might be required to make up the difference over the 58-year life of the contract.

In 2012, Bayonne, New Jersey, cut one of these deals with a private investment company to manage Bayonne's water system. Bayonne got immediate money to update its water system, but bills to water customers went up 28 percent so the investment company could make its profit.

The bottom line is that Saudi Arabia’s $20 billion check will get funneled through an-arm-in-arm Trump adviser in a grab for state and local infrastructure, with the expectation of billions of dollars in profits off the roads, bridges, and transit systems we have to use every day.

            I read a lot of history, and deals like this - which are a foretaste of how President Trump wants to manage his trillion-dollar American infrastructure program - remind me of the Teapot Dome Scandal, almost a century ago, when private companies had the squeeze, the influence, to use public assets at bargain-basement prices. Until Watergate came along, Teapot Dome - which had nothing to do with a teapot - was the greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics.

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THE GOD-AWFUL STORY OF MEDICINES

By Robert P. Bomboy

            My wife and I live on Social Security, and last year we spent, out of pocket, more than $11,000 on GHP Gold, Geisinger physician visits, and prescription medicines. I consider myself in good health, yet between sun-up and sundown I swallow a total of nine different prescription medicines every day.

My wife also takes nine prescribed medicines, which include insulin. Her GHP coverage hit Geisinger's "donut-hole" last September, and for the final three months of 2016, despite this health insurance, she paid full price for her insulin and other prescriptions.

That didn't include a total of $50,263.74 for a hospitalization in September or the $2,568 that went directly to Geisinger from our Social Security.

            That was certainly a lot - the money we spent out of pocket came to one-third of our Social Security payments last year, and that's been about the same every year - but it paled in comparison to what families, many in this area, pay for medicines to fight major debilitating illnesses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, Hepatitis C, and other diseases.

America's drug companies are gouging us every day with high prices on the medicines we - you and I - need to lead healthy and productive lives.

Our for-profit system rewards the biggest pharmaceutical companies with overwhelming monopoly power, and Big Pharma uses that power to charge Americans more than any other country in the world - so much, in fact, that nearly one in five Americans do not fill their prescriptions because they can't afford it. President Trump's god-awful health bill, now in the Senate, will make the situation even worse.

The prescription drug industry is one of the most profitable in the country. It is morally wrong that people have to choose between filling a prescription and putting food on the table for their families.

            Drug companies bleat like lambs about the cost of research and testing, but the truth goes to something much deeper and darker. The drug companies are shameless, and they charge what they can get away with. And, with President Trump's new budget, they will get away with much, much more.

As doctors at the Mayo Clinic put it, “The question is whether current pricing of drugs is based on reasonable expectation of return on an investment or whether it is based on what prices the market can bear.”

            Beyond that, investigators are drilling down to something worse: the rise of nationwide charities connected to Big Pharma itself. These charities say they are helping patients pay the out-of-pocket costs of their medicines, which can range, for example, from $150,000 a year for the latest cancer drug to $300,000 a year for Cystic Fibrosis medicines.

After all, if a patient can't afford out-of-pocket costs of $5,000 for a $100,000-a-year drug, for example, the drug company gets nothing. But if the drug company or the charity pays the $5,000, the patient gets the drug and the drug company receives $95,000 from the patient’s insurance. The drug company also gets very lucrative tax deductions on that money it's "giving."

I actually know someone who's made many millions of dollars on 15 little words you've seen at the bottom of your television screen: "If you can't afford this prescription drug, Big Pharma may be able to help you."

This guy looks before he leaps. He spent several years meticulously inspecting the laws in every state, looking for a loophole that would let him make a gazillion dollars on prescription drugs. When he found the loophole he was looking for, he pitched his tent in Texas.

          Here's the deal: He sets up, in Texas, a charitable foundation with all the trimmings. He and his foundation solicit contributions nationwide to help stricken families where a mother has cancer or a child has Cystic Fibrosis, one of the most heart-rending diseases imaginable. He has a big call center whose operators, with the most piteous voices, plead for donations.

          He rakes in a lot that way, and his foundation actually helps people. But his big money comes from the drug company itself, which paid him $84 million in one year alone. You heard right - $84 million! And there was plenty more after that. Remember, for every sick child he helped, Big Pharma was getting $95,000 and much, much more in round numbers, from the insurance.

          He built a big mansion. He bought a Learjet, had his own pilot, and flew his friends and family to Las Vegas. He had a condo in the Florida Keys and a tax-hiding offshore account in Guyana. He diversified, bought three restaurants, and made millions more on a range of other investments.

          Although he's a skonk, under Texas law he wasn't doing anything illegal, nor was the drug company unless it billed Medicare, which is a no-no.

How does all this affect the price of prescription drugs? In the situation I've been describing, the drug company raised the price of its medicine from $40 a vial to $28,000 a vial. Yes, you heard right, $28,000!

          To cut to the heart of this chicanery, Senator Bernie Sanders and 15 other Democrats are pushing a bill called the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act. It would:

·       Roll back Big Pharma's monopoly, to increase competition and make medicines affordable for everyone;

·       Hold to account companies that engage in price-gouging, fraud, and other abuses;

·       Let Medicare negotiate fair drug prices and lower out-of-pocket costs for older people;

·       Require transparency from drug companies, including financial information like profits and pricing data.

States, including Pennsylvania, are considering similar legislation. Some states  would require drug companies to disclose their manufacturing, marketing and advertising costs, the history of price increases ($40 to $28,000!), their profits on particular drugs, and the money they spend providing financial assistance to patients. Pennsylvania’s bill would let insurers refuse to pay for a drug if the drug company didn't file the required report.

But the drug lobbies are strong. It's one thing to write a bill; it's another to pass it. There are 18 lobbyists for every congressman and senator in Washington. Sadly, the Pennsylvania bill is languishing in the General Assembly.

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LEGIONS OF THE RIGHT

By Robert P. Bomboy

               They used to say you didn't have to look farther than your front door to know what was going on in the world. But it's worthwhile now to try to see the larger picture. If you do, you might be shocked.

            Over the past 25 years, by design, forces of which most of us are unaware have worked assiduously to make sure that Big Business and the richest one percent have gained the upper hand.

LOBBYING

               If you ask yourself, "Who makes the laws?" you'll be surprised at the answer.

Washington lobbyists get lots of money to put Big Business and special interests first. They do the research and actually write the bills that favor Big Business and work against us. Two thirds of congressional staffers say they depend on their favorite lobbyists for the information they use to propose and pass bills. Lobbyists provide the honey that individual congressmen and senators take and turn into law. And that law, by and large, benefits You Know Who - no, not us. We don't stand a chance.

There are 535 members of Congress and 10,000 lobbyists in Washington. Meaning that, if you take out your calculator, you can picture 18 lobbyists swarming like honey ants around each and every congressman and senator in Washington.

When Donald Trump declared that he would "drain the swamp" we can be forgiven if most of us thought he would get rid of those 10,000 pesky lobbyists representing Big Business and the rich. But that wasn't what Trump meant at all. He, after all, is one of the super-rich, and who he works for is Big Business. We saw that during the battle over Trump's Unaffordable Care Act. It came out that while he and his legions would slash away at the coverage of Obamacare, they were planning more than $600 billion in additional tax cuts for the rich.

GERRYMANDERING

As far back as the early 1800's, hardly 25 years after the founding of our nation, political parties were corruptly contriving to twist and elongate the boundaries of voting districts, making them look like writhing salamanders. A governor named [CQ] Elbridge Gerry did the dirty work, and a smart newspaperman tagged him for it, creating the word GERRYMANDER.

Pennsylvania is one of the nation's most gerrymandered states, and ranks very high up on the ladder of political corruption, higher even than our neighbors, New York and New Jersey with all their Mafiosos. The 11th Congressional District, where we live, is almost as twisted as the original salamander, weaving its way 170 miles from north to south, in, out, and around Carbon, Columbia, Cumberland, Dauphin, Luzerne, Montour, Northumberland, Perry, and Wyoming counties. Look on the map and see if you could follow a trail of breadcrumbs through that much twisted territory.

If you decide to gerrymander you do it to create as many voting districts as possible with majorities for your party. That's why our Pennsylvania voting districts have such strange "salamander" shapes: they ramble from pillar to post, from hither to yon, from A to Z, to capture as many Republican voters as possible.

            Across the nation in 2010 conservative Republicans had a plan to throw millions into elections where they thought they had a chance to take over state legislatures and governors' mansions. They wanted to win the state legislatures and governors' offices because it's the state legislatures that redraw and rearrange the voting districts; and, like the original gerrymandering governor, Elbridge Gerry, go-along governors can make that process easier.

Their plan worked. Across the nation in 2010 Republicans won majorities in 10 out of the 15 states, including Pennsylvania, that were due to redraw and reapportion their election districts. With that power behind them, here in Pennsylvania the Republican winners redrew our election districts to give their party uneven breaks. They created salamanders of every description, some so strange and irregular that they might have been the ink blots of Rorschach tests.

By 2012 and the next election, with the voting districts redrawn to favor the Republicans, they were in a position to run the table. In 2012, Pennsylvania Democrats won 51 percent of the popular vote for the House of Representatives, where the greatest and most unassailable power now is. But, thanks to the redistricting, they won only five out of 18 House seats -- fewer than one-third of them. The 13 Republican winners made the House of Representatives even more conservative than it had been before.

PACKING THE SUPREME COURT

               Since 2005 a little known but extremely powerful group of conservative lawyers, the Federalist Society, has been behind the appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court: John Roberts that year, Samuel Alito in 2006, and Neil Gorsuch this year. With Gorsuch confirmed last month, they now represent one-third of the court's members.

               Since the early 1990s the Federalist Society has followed, most rigorously, a plan of its own. Find very intelligent students coming into law schools across the nation; help them in every way to get through law school (their support group numbers 75,000 lawyers); make sure these students graduate as lawyers; then keep them interested and involved with conservative lawyers. The Federalist Society has chapters everywhere, and they're not like the Odd Fellows. Lawyers in the chapters continually work on problems, participate in practice groups, take pro-bono legal cases where they confer together, author articles in law journals, create strong relationships with the news media.

As the law school graduates advance in their careers, they become known and recognized. Inevitably, with the support of the Federalist Society, these conservative lawyers have risen to positions of prominence in the courts, including the federal courts, where their conservative legal philosophies have led them to render conservative decisions.

The Federalist Society knows them and the conservative principles they stand for. John Roberts was known in this way. Samuel Alito was known. Neil Gorsuch was known.

               So when Donald Trump, in his ignorance, was campaigning and wanted a list of lawyers he might appoint to the Supreme Court, the Federalist Society gave him a list, and Neil Gorsuch's name was on it.

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