Earlier this month the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the controversial Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. King v. Burwell, expected to be decided this June, will be the third time the Supreme Court will decide on the law in its brief five-year history.

In 2012, the court narrowly upheld the law’s individual mandate, while last year it decided that not all businesses are required to cover contraception for their employees.

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In King v. Burwell, the issue at hand is whether or not the IRS has the authority to provide subsidies for people to buy health insurance who do not live in states with exchanges of their own. Health care exchanges are marketplaces, mostly via the Internet, where people who do not have insurance can shop for plans. They can be run either by states or the federal government. As of now, only 16 states have opted to run their own insurance exchanges. This means all others must rely on the federal exchange to receive “Obamacare” plans. Supporters of the case say that the way the law is written, the IRS does not have the authority to provide subsidies to people who don’t live in states with exchanges — roughly 70 percent of the country. The 2012 rule, challengers say, was created by the IRS in order to ease fears that states would not create their own exchanges before the 2014 deadline.

The case involves four Virginians, all eligible for health insurance subsidies, who are trying to deny such subsidies. Should the subsidies not exist, they would not be required to pay the individual mandate penalty due to their low incomes. The plaintiffs, backed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, essentially believe that the government is unlawfully coercing them to buy health care they do not want.

Obama administration officials counter that this case is politically charged. They claim that an accurate reading of the law makes clear that subsidies are to be made available in all exchanges, regardless of who is running them. To them, the IRS subsidies are just a way to meet the law’s goal: to insure as many people as possible in America.

Much is at stake should the IRS rule be overturned. Every state without an exchange could be affected. Estimates say that nearly 8 million people may lose the insurance they have now: tens of thousands of whom live here in Ohio. In a statistic released by the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 250,000 Ohioans have signed up for “Obamacare.” A majority of people at risk will be low- to middle-income Americans, many of them healthy, leaving the sickest patients to pay much higher rates. As it stands now, the subsidies provided are directly paid to health insurance companies, and then the savings are passed on to consumers. This translates to about a 75 percent decrease in premiums for recipients. Should the subsidies be rescinded, health insurance companies may not have the money to cover people with pre-existing conditions, or be able to cover young adults who stay on their parents’ plans until they are 26.

A quick fix to the rule being overturned will be an uphill battle. Congressional opponents of the law say Congress may provide financial relief to those losing subsidies, but such a measure would only be temporary and details are sketchy. States could still set up their own exchanges, ensuring their enrollees would get federal subsidies, but it would be an expensive and politically difficult process.

The verdict in the case is expected to be close. Eyes will be on Chief Justice John Roberts, who is considered to be a swing vote. He played a key role in the court’s decision to find the law’s individual mandate constitutionally legal. The court did accept to rule on this case rather quickly, a fact that further proves how contentious the law is.

Ben Osburn can be reached at [email protected].

Finally springtime is at our doorstep — but don’t let it fool you. For this delightful season of crocuses in our gardens brings with it the dreaded season of craters on our roadways. Yes, I’m talking potholes, the perennial plague of pockmarks on the pavement spawned by the wear of traffic and the wrath of winter’s crushing freeze-thaw cycle. And ready or not, they’re here.

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Bump-bump-thump-whap-bang-thud-kerunck! That’s what it was like driving down a stretch of the Anthony Wayne Trail last week. And there’s little escape from it. It’s pervasive. Detroit Avenue and Monroe Street. Jackman and Douglas roads. I-475 and Front Street. All streets now feel like a relief map of the Andes Mountains, offering big thrills for drivers and big bills from the scores of tire and alignment shops who repair our tires, wheels, shocks, axles, front ends, suspensions and brake systems that fall prey to this annual failure of road construction.

So I ask: Why? Seriously, do we really have to put up with this lunar landscape that is gouged into our roadways every spring? Is this our fate? Our karma for some unknown sin we committed against mankind? Did our ancestors also contend with this annual insult or is this a recent development on the bumpy road of civilization?

Apparently it is nothing new. Using my trusty Google search box and a few minutes between TV shows, I was able to find a plethora of stories from decades ago about this springtime of our discontent. I confirmed it, in black and white. We are not the first generation to curse the roads we drive on. It appears that our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and most everyone on our DNA chain over the past century have uttered blasphemous oaths at these voids and potholes, chuckholes and craters, kettles and cave-ins.

They indeed have been a long and ubiquitous part of the driving experience from Tacoma to Toledo, the first one likely surfacing somewhere on Monroe Street shortly after the city’s first delivery truck, owned by Lamson’s department store, took to the muddy streets, splashing people on the sidewalks back in 1899. A few years and a few thousand cars later, the potholes became so bad that a local chapter of the national “Chuckhole Club” was formed, which invited groups of regular folks to get together for pothole-filling parties. It was a bring-your-own-shovel affair and the clubs supplied the buckets of gravel. By 1910, they even had a club insignia featuring a depiction of a shovel and a bucket.

A review of local historical records reveals that in Toledo, the early pothole plague was also frequently tackled by disgruntled vigilantes who took matters into their own hands and filled the holes without asking for city help. Imagine that. It surely must have been a different time and mindset. In 1912, Spokane, Washington, was so plagued by holes in the highways that the governor declared one day in April 1912 as “Good Roads Day,” and urged: “If you own an auto, climb into it with a pair of overhauls on April 12th and ride out into the country and when you get to that chuckhole or rut you cussed out the last time you ran into it, fill it up and level it over. If you can afford to own a car, you can afford to do this.”

One can only wonder what type of beating a politician would take this day and age if this “fix-it-your-own-damned-self” solution were to be decreed or even suggested again?

One hundred years later, though, we do still employ the chuckhole club technique as the primary quick-fix solution, only now we pay city and state street crews to do the dirty work as opposed to setting up volunteer brigades. But the fact remains: the basic technology for pothole repair really hasn’t changed dramatically over the last century. It’s a sort of “whack-a-mole” solution that defies what should be the sensibility of (oxymoron alert) responsible government. C’mon, let’s stop the madness. With today’s great technology, it would seem that we could fix this problem once and for all. And at the risk of being arrested by the cliché police, I’ll dare to say it: We can send a man to the moon, so why can’t we build a road that doesn’t fall apart in the winter?

Perhaps it’s not really viewed as the problem it really is. You see it comes and goes. We gripe and groan, but then by fall, the problem is paved over (pun intended) and then another crisis intervenes and the furor dies down. Policymakers know this and easily brush it aside when it’s no longer front page news.

Time to change that.

I think everyone needs to frame this as more than just a seasonal nuisance or mere inconvenience. First and foremost, the situation is dangerous. Potholes are another one of nature’s ways of trying to kill us. Drivers that dodge or run into the big potholes too often lose control or slam into other cars. And those flying chunks of concrete or asphalt sent airborne by the tires of an 18-wheeler can deliver more than a mere wet spot in your shorts when they hit your windshield.

And then let’s talk money. That reason alone is why drivers all across America should surround their state capitols with pitchforks and signs demanding a solution. Incessant road resurfacing and rebuilding is one of the biggest money sucks in government and from our wallets. We’re not talking millions of dollars. We’re talking billions. Billions, with a “B.”

Every year in just Ohio, the state highway folks at ODOT (Ohio Department of Transportation) shell out well over $2 billion on a wide variety of projects. Lots of that money has to be spent to resurface or replace the pocked pavement that too often crumbles away like week-old toast. It’s a costly scenario that is repeated every year at the city and county levels. And while I fully understand there is a lot to do at ODOT and the agency is charged with taking care of millions of “lane miles” of highway, are any of those billions of dollars in the budget being spent to specifically study and prevent the problem of potholes on our roadways?

Are we really looking for long-term answers and solutions? How many engineers are tasked with finding this elusive Holy Grail of surface material to end this pestilence of potholes? It would be a solution that could save billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Where is the Bill Gates or Stephen Hawking of road construction? We need them desperately, for whatever money is spent to find the ultimate answer may be the best public investment in years. Ironically, when Ohio’s state highway department was started back in 1905, they had four employees, and their only mission was only to study the state roadways and the science of road construction. The annual budget was $10,000. As I drive down the Anthony Wayne Trail, dodging the divots and the dips, I wonder aloud if we are spending even that much today.

In the meantime, look out, big pothole on your left!

Lou Hebert can be reached at [email protected].

Ten years ago, when Toledo Free Press published its first edition, I was five years into what will be a lifelong recovery from a traumatic brain injury. In 2005, I celebrated three years of being able to read again, although not with the prowess I once had. Something I could not even have imagined back then was being a columnist for a newspaper.

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While TFP was finding its legs as a weekly paper in this city, I was learning to use my legs again. While the brains behind Toledo Free Press came together to offer a different view, I was trying to figure out my life with a brain so severely damaged that I barely recognized myself.

Fast-forward to 2009, when my search to find a purpose in life beyond my amazing children and grandchildren led me to a calling to work with veterans who found themselves in a similar position to my own — trying to live their lives after devastating, and often invisible, wounds.

Once my nonprofit, The Arms Forces, had positioned itself as a bridge between veteran issues and the community, I began to wonder how I could get the message out to a greater audience that civilians matter in the lives of veterans. They have a significant role to play and, for them to see that, they needed a way to understand more fully what it means to be a veteran, especially one with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. Education reduces stigma. Reduced stigma opens more doors for our veterans.

In August 2013, I asked for a meeting with then-TFP Editor in Chief Michael Miller and then-Managing Editor Sarah Ottney. I approached them about a way to help me with my mission at The Arms Forces to reduce the divide between civilians and veterans. Both saw the benefit to first our military and veterans and also for the readers of their newspaper. They were familiar with my writing style, which is quite like having a conversation with me in person. They gave me some tips and in September 2013, my first column was published. I have been honored to write a column every month since.

I have received many phone calls and some written messages from people who tell me my columns have opened their eyes to what many of our veterans go through. The writings helped them feel more connected with veterans and less like outsiders who could never make a difference in their lives. I have also received calls from veterans (some in tears, which of course brought me to tears) who told me it meant so much to them that someone cared enough to talk about things in a way many could finally understand. Some even told me their families read the column and now understand more about the veteran’s life than they have in years of living.

Those are powerful words and powerful reasons to support what can seem to be a “touchy-feely” type of column. I choose to approach the column in a way that brings humans together. I choose to look for what unites not what divides. That is a rarity in opinion columns we find in newspapers today. TFP management has supported me by giving me space in its newspaper. Our community is why I continue to write for them. They informed me if the community did not react to the column in a positive way, it would not be good business to continue. So, I thank YOU, the community, for the opportunity to have a voice as a civilian to share about those who have become my dear friends and extended family, our veterans, our military and their families. I thank Toledo Free Press for always putting community first. I believe that is why they are around to celebrate their 10-year anniversary and have won numerous awards at all levels.

We can do our part by sharing TFP stories online and picking up the printed version. We can support the advertisers who allow TFP to be available at no cost to readers. We can let the columnists know when we like an article, when we don’t ,or when we disagree with something the writer has expressed. Constructiv

e criticism can only add to our craft. Offering a different perspective is the American way!

Congratulations to all the staff and writers over the past 10 years! The freedoms included in every issue of this paper are the ones veterans sacrificed to protect. Please keep our military and veterans in mind when you read TFP each week.

Pam Hays is president and founder of The Arms Forces, thearmsforces.org; (419) 891-2111.

I never knew how much stress I was carrying with my smile.

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An incident occurred during a basketball game when I was 12 years old. My face ate the wood floors at the Catholic Club; the contact instantly broke my front tooth in half, leaving the exposed nerve hanging — and I still finished the game.

This is the only story in my history that shows any toughness on my part.

My family dentist fixed the tooth with a cap, which didn’t match in color. At the age of 13, I became aware I had an off-colored smile, with newly matching blue gums above the formerly healthy tooth. I don’t remember smiling a lot before this incident because our home was never overly loving, and my father was battling alcoholism. The dental work that was done made it nearly impossible to smile afterward.

Fast-forward 20 years to when I moved my family back to the area. I found a dentist office that worked with my insurance, filled with a friendly staff. My first visits were amazing with courteous and compassionate dentists who were great with my children.

Then something unexpected happened. They sold the practice to a firm outside the city. Most of the support staff stayed, but new dentists were shipped in.

During my next visit, I was convinced my 20-year-old front tooth/cap could be replaced and covered by my insurance company at little cost. And, while they were replacing it, the dental staff wanted to make it a brighter shade of white, which of course I agreed to. I had little knowledge about dentistry, except I know I hated the sound of the drill.

I later learned the new replacement tooth was affixed to my jaw with a single metal post.

Imagine something skinnier than a toothpick, being the only thing holding a front tooth in place. They wanted to make money off the teeth whitening, having no other reason to replace the 20-year-old cap.

Being a man who values food and eating proved one thing — the replacement job did not work. Over the course of six years, my front tooth broke off completely more than 10 times. Each time another new dentist would remark on how surprised he/she was on the technique of replacing the front tooth — and that the new fix was only temporary. Eventually, they said, I would need some procedure that would cost over $3,000, with insurance unlikely to cover it.

That, my friend, creates some deeply buried stress.

In January 2014, my tooth broke for the final time. I was told it could no longer be reattached, there was no more quality bone to connect the tooth to. Having no dental insurance at the time, and a family of four to feed, I had only one option. The only fix I could afford was to wear a “flipper” — a sportier way to say and describe a denture. It’s something hockey players wear until they retire and have their teeth permanently fixed. For over 14 months I was buying Fixodent and pasting my front tooth into my mouth.

I told no one. To make matters worse, the flipper broke and I started fixing it with some form of Super Glue

So as I was making TV appearances, getting married, growing my public presence — I was wearing a ghetto-rigged, Super Glued, front tooth flipper.

This is the reason why I smirk and express my face in ways other than smiling. It probably explains the eyebrow … possibly.

I cannot understate the amount of subtle and deeply buried stress one carries with a bad smile. It’s embarrassing, it made my heart sad and was my Achilles’ heel.

Then, something unexpected happened.

In early February, I received a message from a friend on Facebook. Marcia Kozy stated she read my columns and posts, she told me her husband was a dentist and they were curious as to why I rarely smiled.

I agreed to come in and we scheduled a meeting. A couple of minutes into the appointment, I felt an urge to get something off my chest. I admitted something that I rarely had before – I hated my teeth and despised my smile.

It was at this very moment, I saw Dr. Paul Kozy’s heart. I never met the man before, but learned so much in a short amount of time. Paul immediately put me in a chair, ordered X-rays and examined my situation. Turns out, he is one of a few dentists in the world who does the exact procedure my mouth needed.

Serendipity.

As I sat in the chair, this man who looks like a cross between Woody Hayes and Carty Finkbeiner examined my mouth thoroughly and excitedly. I learned about his practice: it’s truly family-owned and operated. His two daughters, Bridget Kozy Snyder and Jackie Kozy Baither are both dentists and joined the family business. I also learned about his 5-year-old grandson, who, like my child, has a beautifully gifted mind. One in 68 makes the world extra small.

Recently, I underwent a three-hour surgery to fix a problem I’ve lived with since I was 12. I was sedated with a bag of Valium, conscious and making jokes throughout the procedure.

At noon, Paul handed me a mirror and allowed me to see his work. I was confused, most likely from the drugs, but it was the weirdest thing to see. My teeth looked beautiful.

There is a video coming soon, including this moment where you can see how completely amazed and mesmerized I was. You will also see me on drugs, where at the time I described how I was feeling as “noon on St. Patrick’s Day.”

I did not shed a tear in front of Paul, but I have shed many since.

Paul gave my kids a gift that day. He gave their dad a smile. Something we all are getting used to.

If you are unhappy with your smile, carrying that deeply buried stress, I strongly suggest calling Kozy DentalCare. Dr. Paul, Dr. Jackie and Dr. Bridget make people smile better every day.

Paul played baseball at the University of Toledo, his daughters both went to Ohio State and they are an old-school family dentistry business. It felt like home in their office.

For me, the hardest part is trying to learn how to smile. My kids all have beautiful smiles and take perfect pictures in one take. That’s a skill set I would like to have.

My face has been sore, not from the procedure, but from stretching in ways it wasn’t used to — from smiling.

Thank you Dr. Paul and Marcia – I deeply appreciate the work you’ve done and heart you’ve shown.

Jeremy Baumhower can be reached at [email protected].