Oil City News publishes letters, cartoons and opinions as a public service. The content does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oil City News or its employees. Letters to the editor can be submitted by following the link at our opinion section.

‘Obamacare’ is a giant hole

Dear Casper,

If you want to get out of a hole, stop digging. The so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also referred to as “Obamacare,” is and has been from the beginning a giant hole sucking up our tax dollars. Politicians keep shoveling more of our money into the hole with increasing subsidies to the insurance companies in a vain effort to fix healthcare.

The solution is to rip Obamacare out by the roots and give back our freedom to purchase the insurance coverage we need and want at reasonable rates; not what the overpaid bureaucrats and experts force us to have.

Any American should be able to set up their own health savings accounts regardless of what insurance they have or even if they have insurance and set aside their money tax-free to pay for basic services.

Bring back catastrophic plans with lower premiums designed to cover expensive treatments for sickness and injuries that people could not afford to pay for on their own.
Any group of businesses in the same industry should be able to negotiate plans with insurance companies and doctor networks to achieve the coverages that best fits the needs of their members and their members’ employees and families.

Cut regulations that cause the healthcare system to have too many administrators and too few people actually providing healthcare.

Release the private free market so that we choose from competing insurance plans and healthcare providers.

Let us, the citizens of this great nation, be in the driver’s seat.

Ross Schriftman
Casper

Do our laws even make sense anymore?

Dear Casper,

On Dec. 18, President Donald Trump signed an executive order moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. The biggest shift in federal policy in decades. Not legalization, not yet, but finally, something he actually got right for the benefit of Americans. It shows what research and real people have been saying all along: marijuana has medical value and can be used responsibly. It opens doors to research and eases the ridiculous regulations that have held back doctors, patients and businesses for far too long.

This isn’t just theory. I’ve seen it work. Children with severe autism, with meltdowns no other treatment could touch, finally get relief. Cancer patients struggling to eat regain some strength. Adults with anxiety or depression find stability when nothing else works. Yet decades of policy have blocked research, left patients without options and trapped scientists.

Years ago, I had reached out to Sen. John Barrasso. He wrote back, “Under federal law, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance. Schedule I drugs are highly susceptible to abuse, have no accepted medical use and cannot safely be made available under prescription. While some states have decriminalized the personal use of marijuana, I believe that this further complicates our nation’s fight against illegal drugs. There are also conflicting studies regarding the medical use of marijuana. As a doctor, I believe that the risks to individuals and the larger community outweigh the potential benefits it may or may not provide.”

Here’s the problem. Schedule I status made research almost impossible. Large studies couldn’t be done. Many uses couldn’t be tested safely. And yet the lack of evidence is cited as a reason to block access. It’s circular. The law blocks research and then the absence of research is used to justify keeping it. For a physician-legislator, how do you justify standing in the way of treatment and study when the rules themselves created the “conflict” you claim exists.

Wyoming still resists. Possession is illegal. Medical access is tiny. Even small efforts to decriminalize are blocked. The state has targeted hemp-derived THC products like delta‑8, closing loopholes that used to give people options. This isn’t about tradition. It’s about limiting access. Is it really about safety or just another way to make money?

Luc Colgrove
Casper

Watch Trump stump, I dare you

Dear Casper,

The main reason Wyomingites so overwhelmingly favor President Donald Trump is simple: most of them do not actually watch his speeches.

If they did, they would hear how profoundly out of touch with reality he is.

At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, Trump praised North Korea for having “the best borders.” That alone should have stopped the room cold. North Korea’s border is not designed to keep people out. Nobody is trying to get into North Korea. It exists to keep people in. It is enforced with landmines, shoot-to-kill orders, prison camps and collective punishment of families. Praising that system as a model of border security is not tough talk. It is a category mistake so basic it confuses a sovereign border with a prison wall.

In the same rally, Trump lamented that the United States does not get more immigrants from “white countries” like Sweden and Norway. That statement is just as detached from reality. People do not emigrate in large numbers from countries with high wages, universal healthcare, strong labor protections and stable democracies. There is no mass Scandinavian exodus because there is no reason for one. Wanting immigrants from places where people do not want to leave is not policy. It is nostalgia mixed with racial signaling.

These are not isolated slips. They reveal a consistent failure to understand why people move, why borders exist and how functioning societies actually work. Migration flows from constraint to opportunity. Borders regulate entry into a state. North Korea’s border does the opposite. Sweden and Norway are places people build lives, not escape from.

Wyoming voters mostly do not hear these remarks directly. They encounter Trump through friendly summaries, social media clips or second-hand interpretations that filter out the incoherence. That insulation matters. When you actually listen to him, uninterrupted, the problem is not tone. It is substance.

This is not about left versus right. Conservatives who believe in ordered liberty, limited government, and personal responsibility should be especially alarmed by praise for totalitarian confinement and by racialized fantasies about immigration. Those ideas have nothing to do with conservative principles. They reflect ignorance of basic political and economic realities.

Trump remains popular here because he is rarely heard whole. If Wyoming voters spent an hour listening to his speeches instead of reacting to slogans, many would recognize the gap between the myth and the man.

Gina Douglas
Casper

Enough disrespect from President Donald Trump

Dear Casper,

What the hell? When is my party going to shut President Donald Trump up?

I started to vote when Jesus was still in diapers. Sometimes my vote counted and sometimes it didn’t. And we learn to live our choice.

DJT was a joke eight years ago and has only gotten worse. The hate he rants and now a huge stab in the back about Rob Reiner? Is there nothing that my party can do to step in and make him a grownup?

I see our Sen. John Barrasso standing behind DJT looking for all the world lovesick. Are good people afraid he’ll send his storm troopers?

Ruth Ann Mitich
Casper

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