In my city, the ambulance service is run by a private contractor, but the city government offers ambulance insurance to residents. It's included on my monthly water/sewer/trash bill and costs about four dollars a month. All ambulance services are free. A friend has taken two ambulance rides over the past few years, with nothing out of pocket for either of them.
The insurance is optional. If you don't want to pay the four dollars each month, you don't have to, but it's so cheap and easy why wouldn't you for the peace of mind it offers.
I am not a fan of what's being done to the Department of Education, but the linked article states nothing about anyone's payments increasing 4x. Also, the 41% is in reference to the default rate in the 1980s when for-profit colleges abused the student loan system. The new policies will likely allow for the same abuse that we saw then due to lack of oversight and an understaffed review system.
I can find courts in Oklahoma by entering "Oklahoma" in the search box and selecting Oklahoma from the dropdown menu. Are you not getting the dropdown? It sometimes takes a few seconds for it to appear after you enter your search term.
One of the reasons we've used it for centuries is that in the days before treated water it was safer to drink. Microbes in water had the potential to make you very sick or even kill you. Even today, if you're traveling to a location where the water supply is suspect, it's safer to drink beer instead of water.
They scaled back at one store only. This hardly seems like a trend. The Wal-Mart near my house just finished a major remodel this month, and they increased the number of self-checkout stands and cut down on the number of manned lanes. Only one manned lane ever seems to be open. They clearly are pushing people to use self-checkout.
While I'm pro-union in general, not all unions are equal. Some are powerful. Some are weak. Back in the 1990s I worked part-time for a unionized grocery store chain and was a member of the UFCW. There were four contract negotiations while I was there, and each time the union rolled over and approved pay cuts, decreasing the top pay rate and slashing insurance benefits. Long-time workers saw their pay cut from $11.11 an hour to $7.50 an hour over the course of a few years. Many left or took an offered buyout during the last pay cut. The last cut finally affected me as well and I took that same buyout.
No one at my store liked the union, and I have to admit that it turned me off of unions for a while. The UFCW was weak and had little bargaining power over a company that was losing money and, as we later learned, was being embezzled dry by its president.
There are several license plates missing from Oklahoma. A quick glance shows that the Cherokee Nation and Pawnee Nation plates aren't included. There may be others as well, but I didn't look beyond those two.
The insurance is optional. If you don't want to pay the four dollars each month, you don't have to, but it's so cheap and easy why wouldn't you for the peace of mind it offers.