BIRTH DEFECT -- LIFETIME SENTENCE

Babies born with birth defects have a life time sentence of a pre-existing condition.

It is a fantasy that high risk pools can replace the requirement that health insurance covers all persons, regardless of pre-existing conditions.

California attempted to have a high risk pool. The insurance was both prohibitively expensive and often unavailable due to lack of funding. People who lost their jobs were devastated to learn that they could not afford the COBRA policy offered and that the high risk pools were also not affordable.

I think it is time to explore the idea that people can buy into the Medicare insurance plan.

I find it distressing that some Republicans are joyfully trying to destabilize ObamaCare. A policy of attempting to break the current system ignores the multitudes whose lives were saved or improved by ObamaCare.

I am pleased with the temporary, through September, budget. Except it does include a huge amount of new debt to pay for the military and border patrols. It seems to me that Republicans only hate debt when they are running for office. Once they are in office, they seem to believe that debt is better than taxes.

Democrats can also be short sighted. I support the so called sanctuary city idea. But to totally refuse to cooperate with federal immigration is dangerous and does not help immigrants who are being deported.

For instance, many rural California counties make money by incarcerating immigrants who are being deported. The county provides jail space, but the federal government pays the county for the jail space. If the immigrant is not held in a jail in California, the federal government can put them in a jail anywhere in the country. At least an immigrant who is incarcerated in California has access to California attorneys.

By the time something is a federal problem, it is a complex problem that is not easy to solve. If the problem was actually easy to solve, it would have been solved by local or state government, or by private industries or charities.