Saturday, June 30, 2012

THE HEALTH CARE LAW (OBAMACARE)


The new health care law, nicknamed Obamacare, has polarized the political opinions of Americans like no other issue since the Viet Nam War. A poll, conducted right after the Supreme Court decision that the law was Constitutional, showed that 46% of the respondents agreed with the decision and 46% disagreed with the decision. In the Presidential race Barack Obama is counting on the health care law to win reelection. Mitt Romney is promising that if he wins election he will repeal the health care law.

I would like to weigh in with my opinion on the subject. The health care law has many positive aspects. Millions of people who have no health insurance will now have health insurance. There are two extremes of this group. On one hand there are people who cannot buy health insurance because a member of the family has a chronic health condition – cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, etc. They could not buy health insurance until now. On the other extreme are healthy adults, many with comfortable income who are playing the odds. They are betting that the costs of what medical care they will need is less than the cost of health insurance.
In both cases the average American who has health care and who pays taxes is the loser. In the case of those who cannot buy health insurance, after the family finances are ravaged, the home is foreclosed, and the family is forced into poverty by burgeoning medical bills, the taxpayers begin picking up a portion of the bills and the hospital and doctors begin “eating” bills that cannot be paid. The healthy adults who play the odds are ahead until there is a car accident, a catastrophic illness, a criminal assault. Then the medical bills wipe out all their assets and they become a burden to taxpayers who bought health insurance.
    The health care law is a great positive in assuring millions of Americans who were without health insurance that now they will have it. The law also has a great negative for many Christians and Jews. The law requires all employers offering health insurance to include coverage for “preventive health services”. The Department of Health and Human Services defined this to include contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs like the morning-after pill, and even sterilization. To call such services “preventive health” is to characterize pregnancy as a preventable disease!

    Cardinal Timothy Dolan said that government’s actions “struck at the heart of our fundamental right to religious liberty.” A Federal lawsuit has been filed by a number of religious employers including Geneva College. Their suit contends that the HHS mandate will “coerce thousands of religious institutions and individuals to engage in acts they consider sinful and immoral, in violation of their most deeply held religious beliefs.”

(Read “Following The Call of Conscience: The Health Care Controversy and Religious Liberty” by Alan Dowd in ByFaith, Q2.12 No.36)   

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

I'VE BEEN DOWN THIS ROAD BEFORE


In 2008 I completed a book about my father, TROY WYE PRITT IN HIS OWN WORDS. He had made 30 audio tapes on which he told stories about his life and the memories he had of people in his family and of his close associates. I worked for two years transcribing the tapes and then organizing the material in chronological and subject order. There was enough material on the tapes about his father to write a six page article for GOLDENSEAL magazine. (Winter 2005)
When the book was completed I had to decide how to publish it. I didn’t think it was worth the effort to try to find a publishing house that would want to buy it. It would have had to be a publisher that specialized in West Virginia history. There are only a handful of these.
The other possibilities were various forms of self publishing – vanity press, print on demand, and set up my own publishing company. I chose the latter. I created Mtnpride Books. I obtained a business license for Troy Lynn Pritt dba Mtnpride Books. I opened a checking account for Troy Lynn Pritt dba Mtnpride Books, obtained a sales and use tax permit from Arkansas, an EIN number from the IRS, an ISBN number and bar code for the book, and a Library of Congress Number for the book.
My niece Laura Lynn Sullivan of Photography by Laura Lynn used an old photograph of my father to design the book cover. Then I sent the book and its cover to InstantPublisher.com of Colliersville, TN to be printed and bound. Including overruns I received 265 books. I sold the books on my website mtnpride.com, in a couple of book stores, by email solicitation, a newspaper ad, reviews in several magazines, person to person. My father was in a nursing home. He sold probably half of the books. After about a year I was almost out of books and I ordered 50 as hardbound copies. There were 10 overruns. I sold most of those. June 30, 2009 I closed the business. For almost a year selling books had consumed most of my time.
In November 2009 I wrote a novel LOST AND FOUND for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It was originally a little more than 50,000 words in length. I revised it, rewrote parts of it, added another 20,000 words and now I think it is ready for publication. I have awakened Mtnpride Books from sleep. My granddaughter, Emily Margaret Pritt designed the cover for the book. In the next week or so I plan to send the book and cover to InstantPublisher.com.


Thursday, June 7, 2012

HOW MY WORLD HAS CHANGED

          The April 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine has two major articles that highlight for me how my world has changed. They are “It’s A Rich Man’s World: How Billionaire Backers Pick America’s Candidates” by Thomas Frank and “The Warrior Class: A Golden Age for the Freelance Soldier” by Charles Glass.
            It takes a lot of money to be elected to any office in the present times. In our Congressional District in rural Arkansas, a candidate for House of Representatives won in the Democratic primary over another candidate who spent many times more money. He won by “shoe leather” electioneering. However, the state and national Democratic parties are sorry he won. The Republican candidate has demonstrated an ability to raise lots of campaign funds, had no opponent in the primary and now is in a position to outspend the Democratic contender ten or twenty to one in the general election.
            On the level of Presidential primaries and in the general election in November, billions of dollars will be spent to gain residence in the Oval Office for the next four years. There were candidates who demonstrated an ability to raise funds from tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. They did not win enough votes to become their party’s candidate in the November election. It is the candidates with billions of dollars to spend, whose backers themselves are millionaires and billionaires, who will be our choice whether we like it or not. No matter who we vote for in November, to be our President, our Representative, and our Senator, we know in voting for them that they will go to Washington indebted to their millionaire and billionaire backers to do what is in the best interests of those who bankrolled their election campaigns.
            Military service in the United States of America used to be primarily for patriotic duty, for the defense of our homeland. Two major events have worked to change that, though patriotism is always placed in the forefront. One event was the elimination of the draft. Military service then had to be sold as an attractive and profitable career choice. The other event was the Viet Nam War. The defense of our country was not at stake. 
In former times the best known “mercenaries” were men who joined the French Foreign Legion. Many of them were criminals and murderers from other countries who joined the Legion to escape conviction and sentencing in their own countries. As little nations in Africa, Central and South America were formed from former empires of European nations, mercenaries found opportunities selling their barbarism to would be dictators in these young nations. At first these mercenaries were mostly European. After Viet Nam a number of Americans began joining their ranks. They even had their own magazine, Soldier of Fortune.
            Glass’ article details how mercenaries working for contracting companies in the USA became private armies in Iraq and Afghanistan.