Looking ahead

After a week of heavy negative tidings about fatal stabbing, missing person, suicide, and firing, I had to find an issue to change dreadful events.

So I set my sight on next year’s general election, e.g., likely prospects for every post on the hill. Not a calming topic either but better than the earlier negative tidings.

I won’t name people. It should grant us time to focus on issues that have stirred public discussion among villagers. Let’s explore the pulse of our community!

At home: Has your family income increased over the last 20 years? Or was it stagnant (stayed the same) throughout the period? With more than half of employees literally drowning in poverty income level, was the 5 percent of any help after healthcare cost shot up simultaneously by as much as 56 to over 100 percent? Hmmm! The lights are on but nobody’s home!

Private industry employees are skipped altogether. It was a perfect show of arrogance stampeding the productive sector of the community. They’re taxed to pad government salaries that are higher by at least three dollars per hour. Why suffocate this group of employees who are literally struggling too?

Compare: Now, let’s compare your increase versus theirs. Let’s say you’re making $24K per year. You add the 5 percent hike of $1,200 for a total of $25K. You add the 80-percent increase in legislative salary of $39,500 for a hefty increase of some $31,600, for a total annual income of $71,100.

Eh, da guys and gals are still way ahead by some $30,400 while you munch on meatless bone on the dirty kitchen floor. An appalling sense of perception, giving taxpayers the perfect royal-screw, confirming they’ve taken you for fools too! Really? Well, some dire reciprocity is on its way for delivery in 2018.

Future: Now, let’s say that a good number of our esteemed legislators lose in next year’s election. Would any of them find a job that pays $71,100 per year with comically humiliating credentials? Or wouldn’t they be relegated to hauling picnic tables and canopies? Honestly, would any of you land a job that pays handsomely as your unearned legislative salary today? Louder, please?

Moreover, taxpayers deserve better quality representation than what we have today. Opening luggage at the Division of Customs for 20 years doesn’t qualify one to take a leap of blind faith into policymaking.

Hence, we should require at least an AA degree or better as a must-have qualifications to run for public office. Eh, we may be assured that the humiliating reading deficiencies turn history. It should also ensure that policymakers are conversant of issues and capable of articulating their views.

In simple terms, it’s good to have people who know where the goal posts are located when they hit the ground running. Enough of the search and rescue squadron looking for the backdoor at the Legislature!

Economy: It is trumpeted the growth of the local economy by 28.6 percent. Did any of this reach median income folks or the 14,000-plus drowning in poverty income and below?

Opposition: Evidently, the Democrats are simmering with determination to forge a powerful opposition group after years in hiatus. Encouraging that it is pulling in a lot of the young and educated folks into the fold. They are ready to pitch into shifting the narrative that has gone stale, retardedly boring and redundant!

The national DNC has taken an active role too. It should prove an interesting tug-o-war up ahead. A natural narrative awaits Democrats fully packaged by the GOP itself! Democrats would present strong and meaningful opposition against Uncle Taga. Isn’t this the legend that killed his son for crap? No mas!

Malpractice: It’s not surprising why insurance firms keep a 10-foot pole from providing physicians here with malpractice insurance. It isn’t surprising, though, why physicians prefer the current arrangement where malpractice is covered under a government liability program.

It would be foolhardy for the government to shoulder malpractice insurance alone. It’s a hefty obligation in the millions of dollars. It could easily translate into another increase in hospital fees to make up for money going into malpractice insurance cost. It would be the equivalent of a train wreck left to mow down everything in its way, especially empty family pockets.

The NMI definitely needs a strong vetting system where CHC hires experienced physicians who are also conscientious. Moreover, to defray the cost of malpractice medical insurance, it is wise to let doctors pay 50 percent of the cost. It should force them to guard against careless mistakes, knowing that half would be coming out of their pockets. The current arrangement only encourages a tour of the Asia-Pacific area.

Partnership: Kaiser Permanente, a huge healthcare consortium, has moved into Maui to offer a partnership—private/public—in the delivery of quality healthcare. The island population is almost the same as the NMI.

What it has to offer may be a good thing to explore in an effort to ensure healthcare delivery here doesn’t take a steady diet of deterioration, including cost beyond the reach of ordinary folks. Frankly, has the quality of healthcare improved since CHC opened its doors in 1986? Does it have a good backup system?

Oral cancer! In the mid-’80s, I met a patient at Straub Medical Clinic whose entire jaw was removed for oral cancer. It was replaced with prosthesis. I felt sorry the elderly man never knew his fatal ailment came from years of betel nut chewing.

I learned that oral cancer metastasizes (spreads) quickly, where the patient easily loses taste, tongue, jaw, and life. Once you contract it, even an aggressive treatment isn’t a guarantee of bouncing back to normal health. Quit now while you’re healthy!