Matthew Bays: Democrats agree, bipartisanship is key | Guestview
The vice chairman of Bay County Republicans, Tho Bishop, recently showed interest in bipartisanship for solving many of the problems our children face. I was delighted to hear of this newfound interest in working together.
Indeed if one looked back into the history of the “Don’t say Gay” bill, one would know that Democrats originally wanted a bipartisan piece of legislation. Democrats offered alterations to focus the legislation on sexually explicit or graphic instruction, rather than vague “age appropriateness.” Democrats offered these suggestions so our deepest concerns that teachers or students simply talking about their families wouldn't get a teacher fired, and to focus on the true threats to our children. These suggestions were rejected by Republicans.
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Democrats would happily work together with Republicans in the area of housing affordability if the plans were meaningful. But rather than the Republicans’ idea of a Hunger Games-style lottery to give one in every 617 Bay County families 3% of the price of a Bay County home, we should take what has worked in Democratic states in recent years and enact meaningful zoning reform. Let’s use free market principles to allow owners to do what they see fit with their own land, and allow re-development to provide homes to the new influx of residents. Unfortunately, so far Republicans have turned this free market approach into yet another culture war, and call such attempts “abolishing the suburbs” while raiding affordable housing funds.
I also applaud Mr. Bishop for being the rare Republican to say that a working class woman and their unborn child being in need of health care is a societal failure. This is quite different from the previous two Republican presidential candidates: Romney, who said that "47% of the country” wanted "gifts” in terms of needs like health care, or former President Donald Trump who called the working poor and their families "morons," and focused on cutting access to the already meager health care safety net used by thousands of working Bay County families. It pleases me to see the Bay County Republican vice chairman disagree with Donald Trump on anything, let alone something as important to Democrats as health care to the needs of the working class.
I disagree, however, that the solution is found in the free market in this case, or by developments in telemedicine. Like many Bay County residents, I’ve seen what the free market allows in health care in a time of need. As a cancer survivor having been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 20, I required treatments that would have cost $100,000 at the time if it weren’t for the fact I was born to a family with access to health insurance through my parents’ professional careers. I needed access to affordable chemotherapy and radiation, not the ability to Zoom a doctor. My wife recently delivered our third child via an emergency C-section, a procedure that, if we did not have insurance, would have cost over $60,000. A pregnant woman needs access to affordable ultrasounds, bloodwork, and possibly surgeons. Not Skype. As too many families know, the choice between going into bankruptcy and losing a loved one is no choice at all.
I welcome Mr. Bishop’s tone in being critical of corporate medicine. However, Democrats believe that votes mean more than words, and plan to actually tax and regulate corporations into providing hard-working Americans the health care they need. Republicans instead have provided the biggest corporate tax breaks in decades. If the GOP wants to stop simply saying mean things about corporations with one side of their mouth while giving tax breaks to them with the other, Democrats stand ready to help.
Matthew Bays is president of the Young Democrats of Bay County.
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Democrats agree, bipartisanship is key | Guestview
