As the Affordable Care Act has rolled out, we can see its impact. Millions have lost their individual policies. Millions more are now losing their employer policies. Health care premiums have skyrocketed as deductibles on policies are rising. Many Americans wonder if there is a better answer to the problems associated with health care insurance.

Representative Tom Price has stepped into the debate with a bill that would empower patients and address the many problems in the health care market. He was on my radio program recently to talk about his bill Empowering Patients First Act. Let’s look at how he deals with the three Ps that are problems: portability, pre-existing conditions, and price.

Portability is a bigger problem for the younger generation. He says the average millennial will have 12-15 different employers in her lifetime. That means she will have 12-15 different health care plans. His bill would allow individuals to own their policies, no matter who is paying for them. “Employees would be able to change jobs, or even careers, without worrying about an interruption in their coverage or care.”

This change would also address many of the issues with pre-existing conditions. His bill would also allow individuals all across the country to form large insurance pools to enjoy the purchasing power of millions. In case you are wondering, this practice is currently prohibited by law.

The bill also has other ways to reduce the price of health care coverage. It addresses the practice of defensive medicine. At least one third of our health care expenses are for tests or exams to shield doctors from frivolous lawsuits. He estimated that the cost of defensive medicine is $800 billion each year. His bill would also increase the use of health savings accounts, a mechanism that will also lower cost.

This bill is an attempt to address problems of portability, pre-existing conditions, and price without implementing a government takeover of our health care system. It deserves our consideration.

The debate over whether Arizona should amend that state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act led to all sorts of attacks. Many characterized the bill to amend the law as “Jim Crow for gays.”

We can debate whether such a law was necessary or prudent and can leave that debate to another day. But these bills that are popping up in various legislatures should be discussed and debated on their merits not attacked with misleading and inaccurate portrayals.

Napp Nazworth recently explained in a commentary why these “Religious Freedom Laws are Nothing like Jim Crow.” In the past, Jim Crow laws mandated government discrimination. They separated blacks and whites at government facilities. There were separate schools, parks, and seating areas (in courtrooms, libraries and public transportation). None of the bills proposed require anything like that.

Second, Jim Crow laws required private business owner to discriminate. These laws mandated that businesses deny access to certain accommodations. Business owners were required by state law to separate facilities for whites and blacks. Neither the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act or any of the state laws or the proposed bills would require or even allow businesses to deny access to homosexuals.

Finally, Jim Crow laws used government coercion against private businesses. These religious freedom laws do just the opposition. They restrict government action based upon the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The laws say that government cannot infringe upon your religious liberty unless there is a good reason to do so and it cannot avoid doing so.

We can certainly debate whether such laws are necessary. In many cases, the free market would probably take care of any discrimination. Would a baker or florist or photographer stay in business very long in a community if the owner were actually discriminating against certain people? I doubt it. Should the owner of these businesses be allowed to act on their moral or religious convictions? I would think most Americans would say yes. Religious freedom laws are not Jim Crow laws.

If you go into a classroom today, especially one in a classical Christian school, you will most likely see a timeline of history. These help you see what was happening in different segments of society and discover who were contemporaries of other historical figures.

One blog post on history caught my attention. The title was: “8 Surprising Historical Facts That Will Change Your Concept of Time Forever.” One fact was the statement that Harvard University was founded before calculus was invented. Harvard was established in 1636, and obviously did not have calculus classes at the colleges. Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton invented calculus nearly 50 years later.

Another fact connects two of my passions: history and baseball. The last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series, the Ottoman Empire still existed. The Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908. The Ottoman Empire was established in the 13th century. The last sultan of the empire’s reign ended in 1922.

The jewelry store Tiffany & Co. was founded before Italy was a country. True, the county of Italy has existed for millennia, but the modern country of Italy did not come together until 1861 when General Giuseppe Garibaldi brought together the various city-states. Charles Lewis Tiffany and John Young founded Tiffany & Young in 1837 and then became Tiffany & Co. in 1853. It is also worth mentioning that Macy’s was founded in 1858, also before Italy became the nation we know it as today.

Finally, two of President John Tyler’s grandsons are still alive. That seems impossible since Tyler was this nation’s 10th president, but apparently they are alive and their identities verified.

There are other interesting facts you might want to check out. This blog post illustrates once again how interesting history can be.

Why did we need health care insurance reform? Proponents usually pointed to four reasons: the uninsured and the three Ps. Those would be price (the rising health care costs), pre-existing conditions, and portability. Most of the focus during the debate on the Affordable Care Act was on price, pre-existing conditions, and the uninsured. Now more discussion is focusing on portability.

U.S. Senate candidate Ben Sasse recently explained on my radio program why portability is a major issue that often does not get the attention it deserves. He pointed out that people change jobs more frequently than the past. Not so long ago, men and women might stay in the same career their whole lives and may only change jobs within that career once or twice. Those days are long gone.

He reminded us that we don’t have problems with portability with our pensions or our car insurance. A woman driving from one job to another job doesn’t have to worry about a fender bender while driving to her next job. Her old employer and her new employer don’t own her car insurance. She does.

This brings us back to the oddity of medical insurance. Your employer doesn’t own your car insurance. Your employer doesn’t own your home insurance. Unfortunately, for most people their employer does own their medical insurance. If you change jobs, you change medical insurance and face a major challenge if you have pre-existing conditions.

I think you should own your own medical insurance. A health saving account with a high-deductible insurance policy is a way that you can be empowered to make wise economic decisions. The high-deductible plan can cover major costs related to serious illnesses or accidents. The health savings account allows you to pay for smaller, routine health care costs.

Your health savings account is portable, so you can keep it even after changing employers or leaving work. We need more discussion about a system that empowers patients and allow them to carry their policy with them.

If you want to understand what’s at stake in the debate about same-sex marriage, you need to read the New York Times op-ed by Ross Douthat. The title tells it all: “The Terms of Our Surrender.” He concludes that eventually the Supreme Court will be forced to redefine marriage and allow same-sex marriages in all 50 states. Starting with that premise, he then predicts what might happen.

Although the political debate will be finished, the country will remain divided on the subject of marriage, with a substantial minority of Americans (most of them religious) committed to the traditional view of marriage. One scenario is where religious conservatives would “be left to promote their view of wedlock within their own institutions.” And when there is a conflict that arises where say “a Mormon caterer or a Catholic photographer objected to working at a same-sex wedding” then gay rights supporters would allow dissenters to opt out. While this may be a theoretical possibility, it is certainly unlikely in light of what we have seen so far in the debate about homosexual rights and same-sex marriage.

The more likely scenario is that opposition to homosexual unions would be treated the same way segregationists were treated. “The unwilling photographer or caterer would be treated like the proprietor of a segregated lunch counter, and face fines or lose his business.” Of course, that is what is already happening.

He goes on to remind us that religious-affiliated adoption agencies have already been closed in Massachusetts and Illinois. More would be closed, unless they agreed with the ruling that same-sex marriage is the same as traditional marriage. He also believes that “religious schools and colleges would receive the same treatment as racist holdouts like Bob Jones University, losing access to public funds and seeing their tax-exempt status revoked.”

This is what is at stake in this debate. Some naively feel that the debate about same-sex marriage is merely about allowing homosexuals to get legally married. No, Christians will discover that their world will never be the same once same-sex marriage is completely legalized.

Are humans the enemy? Should animals have constitutional rights? Should peas be granted personhood? These questions may sound ludicrous. Nevertheless, professors and leaders in environmental rights groups are asking these questions and providing bizarre answers.

Wesley J. Smith was on my radio program recently to talk about his new documentary “The War Against Humans.” You can watch it on YouTube and also order the companion e-book. You will quickly see or read that these questions are not satire or science fiction. There are people who believe that humans are the problem, and the only solution is to grant legal rights to animals and plants. Some go so far as to suggest that we find some way to reduce the human population by 90 percent.

Smith documents these claims in his video and e-book. Anti-human activists want to place all our valuable natural resources (from oil to land) off limits for human use. Farmers could be held liable for plowing new fields because they might lead to the death of rodents, snakes, and even weeds. African hydroelectric projects to bring power to villages would be shut down because they violate the right of rivers to run freely.

These ideas do not spring from the biblical concept of having dominion over the earth and being a good steward of God’s creation. Instead, they came from the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s that sees humans as a “disease” or as “parasites” or as a “cancer” that is hurting Mother Nature. It then evolved into the “nature rights” movement that desires to give fauna and flora “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.” We end up with a pantheistic idea that eliminates any distinction between humans and other life forms.

These ideas don’t just surface in academic settings or environmental rallies. They end up in our laws. That is why we need to counter these erroneous ideas and defend the biblical principle of human dignity.

If you will be working on your taxes between now and April 15, you might consider how much easier it could be if Congress passed a bill proposed by Representative Dave Camp. He is the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. The Camp plan would lower tax rates and make the tax code fairer and less complicated. Of course anything would be less complicated than the current tax code that runs more than 70,000 pages.

The 979-page bill is the result of more than 30 hearings in his committee. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to pass both houses of Congress even though most Americans would probably approve it as soon as they heard the specifics. I think this illustrates, once again, the incredible disconnect between Congress and the American people.

The Camp plan would collapse the various tax brackets into three. Most of us will either pay 10% or 25%. The highest rate of 35% would not kick in until $450,000 for joint filers. The plan would sweep away many of the deductions, credits, and special interest loopholes by raising the standard deduction to $11,000 for individuals and $22,000 for couples. His plan would also maintain the mortgage interest deduction for all current loans and modify benefits for future home loans.

The Camp plan would also consolidate various redundant provisions in the tax code. It would also lower the corporate tax in America that is already the highest in the world. That would make U.S. business more competitive, bringing jobs back to this country and providing a foundation for the creation of new jobs.

This plan would be revenue neutral in the first year, but would quickly generate hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue. It would kick-start the economy because of the lower tax rates and the elimination of thousands of hours now devoted to tax compliance.

As I said, most Americans would welcome the Camp plan. The fact that many believe it is “dead on arrival” illustrates how out of touch many of our elected representatives in Congress are.