Letters: Getting vaccines across the globe; GOP on wrong side of public opinion

Getting vaccines across the globe

There are formidable pressures from market forces to prevent quick access to the formula and manufacturing techniques for the vaccines for COVID, while their manufacturers make billion dollar profits.

We all know that at root medicine is a right beyond profits. And we know that the world is a moral brotherhood where all of us should receive the shots together.

Let’s work with the non-governmental organizations like Oxfam and Public Citizen to bring the vaccines to the third world quickly. The world is not a map but a collection of faces, each with a sacred moral appeal.

GOP on wrong side of public opinion

What do today’s Republicans actually stand for?

American conservatism once meant something tangible, whether one agreed with its ideas or not. Today’s Republican Party not only offers no coherent national platform for 2022, it’s on the wrong side of public opinion on the most pressing issues facing our country.

National polls show:

• The vast majority of voters, including 57% of Republicans, oppose partisan gerrymandering. Why, then, do Republican legislators continually fight efforts to create Independent Redistricting Commissions?
• Two-thirds of Americans, including more than half of Republicans, think the government should act more aggressively to combat climate change. Why, then, do Republican legislators fight efforts to address the climate crisis?
• 74% of voters, including most Republicans, support a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients. Why, then, do Republican lawmakers continue to fail “Dreamers.”
• More than 60% of Americans broadly believe abortions should be legal during the first trimester of pregnancy. Why, then, are Republican-led states passing the most restrictive abortion laws in history?

Americans overwhelmingly believe in fair taxation of America’s wealthiest, universal health coverage, and resettlement assistance for Afghan refugees who aided U.S. troops.

Republican lawmakers are on the wrong side of public opinion on all of these issues — and they know it. Why else do they continue to focus their energies on divisive culture-war issues, Trump’s Big Lie and rigging future elections? Is this the only way they stay in power? Have they nothing else to offer?

Who are the Republicans actually representing? It’s certainly not the American people.

Voting matters

The past 12 months have been very dramatic and I, for one, am exhausted by the relentless assault on emotion, logic and reality perpetrated by “Republicans” of national, state and local prominence. Those of us who believe in democracy and a just America governed by reasonable and reasonably kind people — we cannot give up. We must exercise our vote at every opportunity, big and small. Please vote — we plant the seeds of tomorrow today.

Medicare drug negotiation belongs in bill

As we look at the Build Back Better bill in the Congress and Senate, why is the ability to negotiate the cost of drugs for Medicare not in the final draft? Because your Congressman and Senator are beholden to the pharmaceutical lobby. When we look at the cost of all the possible benefits of the bill, negotiating the cost of drugs for Medicare patients costs nothing and saves everyone money.

But it is not in the final draft of the bill. Why? The largest drug buyer in the world, Medicare, can’t negotiate better prices with pharmaceutical companies. That isn’t American, that isn’t capitalism.

Call your senator and representative and tell them your tired of them serving the big pharmaceutical lobby. Serve your constituents. The pharmaceutical rationale that research and bringing new drugs to market would be effected if full prices were negotiated is a lie. Almost every other nation in the world negotiates the cost of their nationalized health care pharmaceutical costs. Serve your constituents or we will vote you out of office.

Put Medicare drug negotiation back into the bill. Democrat or Republican, should make no difference. Vote for the ability to negotiate the cost of pharmaceutical medicines in Medicare so we all save money.

Work together, cross political lines in bipartisan fashion, for the good of hardworking Americans or we are going to vote you out of office.