Speak Out 5/2/16

Prescribing the pill

With the passing of a Missouri House bill allowing pharmacists to prescribe oral contraceptives, I envision the complications associated with this practice. Do pharmacists have the education and training to make clinical decisions about contraceptive risks and benefits or do they only have training on dispensing medications? Also, who is going to answer the phone calls if there is a complication associated with them prescribing those medications? Pharmacists will now have to keep themselves available 24 hours a day to answer such phone calls. Abortions will not change in that patients now have essentially unlimited access to oral contraceptives; currently this bill does not change that availability. If pharmacists want to practice medicine, they should go to medical school.

Perception matters

It's not what is true that matters among voters. It's what they perceive as true. Thus, David Limbaugh is accurate and truthful when he says that Republican rules require 1,237 delegates to get the presidential nomination and not necessarily who received the most popular votes or who won the most primaries where voters were allowed to vote en masse. However, because of the way it looks, Donald Trump's claim that the system is rigged against him is perceived as ringing true among Trump and non-Trump supporters alike who feel that somehow they are being ripped off and their voice is not being heard or is even being subverted. Quoting or paraphrasing obscurantist party rules does nothing to curry favor with the teeming masses who think they've been stiffed.

Lost revenue

Missouri lost $50 million because lawmakers didn't act on tobacco lawsuit. Yes, these are the people you voted in and will keep voting back in.

Teen birth rate

Good news! In the last couple of decades, the teen birth rate has dropped by over 40 percent.

Rigged process

Say what you will about Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, but they have brought to the forefront the fact that the choosing of presidential nominees is rigged in favor of party activists, the establishments of both parties, party caucuses, super delegates, etc., all at the expense of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill voter. Now we need to follow through and quit attempting to subvert the will of the people.