The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Jeff Mackey's letter last week supported Greg Walden for trying to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Walden's bare-bones plan that would have resulted in 1/3 of Central Oregonians losing their health insurance. This plan was unanimously rejected by all heath-care organizations. Even Republicans realized that it was garbage and voted it down.

You cannot convince me that Walden is looking after Central Oregonians' best interests.

I participated in protests to get Walden to hold a Town Hall in Bend on his health plan. He never showed his face to defend it.

Health insurance is a burden for everyone, until you need it. I have heard many stories from those who hated Obamacare until they were really sick and realized how great it is. Rather than modifying Obamacare to address its weaknesses, Walden's plan would have replaced it with low-quality, cheap insurance with payout limits, no included preventive care, eliminating the Individual Mandate and Medicaid expansion. Totally worthless and likely to cause many people to go into bankruptcy or die when catastrophic health issues occur, with nothing to keep insurance companies in check.

What conservatives need to realize is that Obamacare was based on a GOP plan already implemented and working well in Massachusetts.

This plan used market-forces and private insurance marketplace rather than government-controlled healthcare like most other developed countries have.

ACA enabled millions of consumers to have healthcare for the first time.

It cost more for a few, but the insurance was much better.

Obama backed this because he wanted buy-in from Republicans in Congress.

If left to his own preferences, I suspect that Obama would go for a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer system controlled by the government instead.

Obama was trying to get compromise on this rather than something that the other party would object to.

For this compromise, Obama got years of obstruction in return. It became a political football for Republicans to discredit Obama. It's still a good plan and the ONLY way to get to a market-driven insurance system that actually works.

Then Mackey asks "What did I miss?" listing lower taxes, rule of law, creating jobs and greater security that he believes we have now, as if Walden or Trump had anything to do with these.

Trump has created the illusion of greater security rather than actually improving it. How is it possible that we are more secure when:

• He has done everything that Putin wants in order to break up the world order that has benefited the U.S. since WWII and degrade our position as world leaders, including: Non-support of NATO, siding with Russia on Assad, starting trade-wars with our allies and backing out of the Iran nuclear deal.

• He trades insults publicly with North Korea, almost escalating to nuclear war

• Allies are now reluctant to share intelligence because it might get disclosed publicly by Trump

• FBI informants are now reluctant to cooperate because they might be compromised

• Allies don't trust our word anymore because we are backing out of so many agreements

• Russians can interfere with our politics and spread propaganda with impunity and the Whitehouse says nothing

• Immigrant parents are being separated from their children, against international law

• True felons are being pardoned for political purposes

• Nothing significant is being done to address the opioid crisis

• Rhetoric from Trump has made some of the population untrusting of legitimate news sources and trusting of political propaganda from dubious sources

• Trump himself uses unsecured phones for official communication. If Hillary did this, she would be in jail.

Rule of law? You must be kidding. Laws only apply to the little people in the U.S. now. Laws don't apply to Trump.