Her parents came to the US from Germany by boat. When the boat pulled into NJ my mother in law went into labor with my wife's older sister. She had the baby and when they came back to the dock the boat was gone and all their belongings were on the dock. A couple years later my MIL was pregnant with my wife and went back to Germany to visit her mother and My wife was born in Germany. Years later when the in-laws became citizens they forgot to put her down on their paperwork, as her sister was a citizen by birthright. Through the years the kids had some kind of joint passport and when in their teens they each got their own passports. It wasn't until we got married and she went to change her social security card they asked for her birth certificate which was in German and they informed her she was not a citizen. It took us several years to get her citizenship straightened out.
Wow, that's scary to realize and have to get situated. thanks 4 sharing.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of comparing situations and deciding which of the (necessarily foreign) ideas actually make sense
I beg to differ. He wasn't positing it as what makes sense, he was hoping it is used in
how to interpret our constitution - in which case, other countries' laws are irrelevant. Sure, that's what he wants - he wants them to decide it in a way for "whatever makes sense for our current situation" - Unfortunately for him, that's now how law and courts work. Their job is to interpret our constitution, whether it makes practical sense for us or not.
The healthcare system is a matter of statute, not constitutional rights. So taking a look at how other countries deliver higher quality care at lower cost is a good idea
I agree with this. And I think there are tons of entitlements/freebies/etc that we could CUT from our current federal budget in order to make healthcare a possibility - or even just bite the bullet and make Obamacare subsidies increased, so that healthcare isn't totally free, but mostly free.
I expect to be pounced on hard for what I'm about to say, but I've always thought free school lunches is something that perhaps should be cut. It's obviously the parents' responsibility to provide food for their children, that's pretty basic, and shouldn't be done by the government, plus it's become a slippery slope, since its inception people have begun to (inevitably) ask "why not breakfast? the poor children are hungry". Soon they will ask "why not dinner?" and "why not other things they need?" etc. etc.
We could also reverse course on all the student loan forgiveness stuff - if you took out a loan, you did so knowing you'd have to pay it back.
Also pell grants need to be redirected to trade schools and shorter degree programs, rather than funnelled deliberately toward 4 year programs
Renewable Energy Tax Credits could go away.
Half of what ICE is spending could be done away with, half or more of those people don't need to be arrested or detained, they're in the middle of a LEGAL asylum process.
Then figure out a way to make sure no billionaire is paying zero effective tax.
On top of all that, get to where Obamacare costs about $100/mo for anyone. Then AGGRESSIVELY come up with programs to reward good health. I don't mean the stupid easy stuff that employers usually do, where you use the honor system to claim you walked so many miles this week and get a credit, I mean verifiable stuff like bloodwork done and glucose going down, or weight loss, etc. I think Americans need to have their feet held to the fire more when it comes to good health. Do I mean blaming the victim for his/her disease? Absolutely. People need to realize the hard truth that a lot of their health problems come from their lifestyle. Something must be done to change consumer behavior, rather than just throwing money at the problem of poor lifestyle>poor health>costs.