Bob Etheridge weighs in on health care reform

Posted March 19, 2010 at 2:05 pm and filed under City, Headlines. Updated March 20, 2010 at 3:20 pm.

As Congress nears its decision on health care reform, U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge (who represents District 2, which includes Garner) weighed in. In a speech from the U.S. House floor Wednesday, he spoke of a Clayton woman who has a brain tumor and whose insurance company plans to drop her coverage.

“[This is] an all-too-real example of why we need health reform,” he said.

Read the full N&O “Under the Dome” post here: A prelude to a ‘yes?’

Update Friday: Etheridge said that he will vote in favor of the health care bill.

Read the N&O story: Etheridge says he’ll vote yes

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4 Responses for “Bob Etheridge weighs in on health care reform”

  1. keven says:
    March 19, 2010 at 2:13 pm

    Open letter to Members of congress about health care reform :

    Dear Members of congress ,
    Here are some questions for You :

    1 – Why are we the only industrial country on earth to not have health care for all? Look at all of the countries in Europe ,England ,France , Italy ,Germany , Japan , Korea ,Canada,Israel ,Spain , …… Even dictatorship countries like Cuba ,Iran ……offer health care for their citizens .
    Do you think we are smarter than the rest of the world? If you say we can not afford it, then why can we afford $ 700 billions a year or $ 7 trillion in 10 years on military ( spent on bombs & guns ) ?
    What do you expect people around the world to think of us when they see us bringing an injured Dog from Iraq to the United States for treatment ,while we left 50 millions of our own people without medical care ? For sure, they will think We are insane !!!.
    Is your heart breaking when you see thousands of people get in line at midnight under cold weather each time they have FREE check up ? How about a woman, who will never have the chance to see a doctor in 27 years ?

    2 – Do you and your family have health insurance? If Yes, then why not 50 millions of your fellow citizens have it ?

    3 – How would you feel when any member of your family dies because of having no health insurance ? Think about 45 thousands of your fellow citizens and children dying every year because of the lack of health care .

    4 – Children are the future of this country. How can our sick, unhealthy children, and young adults can compete with the Chinese , Japanese , and European children in the future? Our nation will be strong or not depend on their health , why not invest on them for a healthy nation ? .

    5 – Millions of people use Emergency rooms as primary care .Thousands of Americans file bankruptcy every year because of health care bills, and at the end we still have to pay for them anyway, so why can’t you find the smarter way out?

    6 – Why do we spend the most on health care but still have 50 millions without health care with a broken system?

    7- why don’t You learn anything from housing crisis ? Like housing cost in the past. Health care cost now is sky rocket and many experts predict the next big crisis will be health care so millions of our people will die if health care reform failed.

    Businesses & companies have to pay too much for health care and our products became more expensive, compare to other countries.
    Many talent & skilled people are being wasted because they have to do the job they don’t like for health care.
    Many inventions & new ideas never became new business because the system holds people as hostages, and people can not open business because they are afraid of losing their health insurance.
    No wonder unemployment is so high because Jobs can not be created.
    Once the health care reform pass , many skills & talents will be discovered, and new businesses will be open with new inventions and new ideas .American products will be exported around the world instead of being imported too much from China, and many jobs will be created .
    Super powered, special interests have super voices, but millions of families have no voice. Many commented from the Internet ,media may be posted by special interests, and millions of people may not even have Internet access .
    Please forget about politic, It can be half empty & half full bottle of water story .
    Many people that support or oppose, may not tell the full story . Think about the old times all of us believed the earth was flat. Remember back at the time when many of us believed Women should not be allowed to vote?
    Not long ago 80 % of people opposed medicare & social security bill at that time.
    After 9/11 80 % of us believed war on Irag was a good idea. Sometimes, special interest controls the story, and tell people the story they want and control the minds of the people, so please forget about politics.
    Please stand up and do what is right for the future of our country. I believe if you vote YES on health care reform, history will remember you as hero of our great nation.

    Take an action , pass health care reform NOW.

  2. Realist says:
    March 19, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Oh yeah? What’s her name Congressman. Let me check your story…

  3. Jim says:
    March 19, 2010 at 5:04 pm

    Some answers for Keven:

    1 – “Why are we the only industrial country on earth to not have health care for all?”

    - We have a much stronger foundational commitment to liberty than other countries. This socialized healthcare movement is all about expanding the power of government over our lives and the economy.

    We’re also “the only industrial country” that produces the vast bulk of medical R & D leading to new advances in medicine precisely *because* we don’t have socialized medicine. Canada used to be a significant source of medical progress; then they socialized their system and pretty much killed off their contribution to medical R & D. Obamacare promises to do the same to our industry’s contribution, with no one in view to pick up the considerable slack.

    “Even dictatorship countries like Cuba ,Iran ……offer health care for their citizens.”

    - No surprise there!!

    2 – “Do you and your family have health insurance? If Yes, then why not 50 millions of your fellow citizens have it?”

    - Be assured that government-imposed health care (or “insurance”) will be of a much lower quality than what members of Congress provide for themselves and their families.

    3 – “How would you feel when any member of your family dies because of having no health insurance?”

    - People die because of things like illness and accidents, not “because” the government didn’t do something for them. Even with insurance, lots of people still do and will die.

    And as bad as I feel about anyone who dies who might have been helped with insurance, I feel even worse about a citizenry who thinks the job of government is not the protection of legitimate rights and liberties (as our nations founders intended) but to impose bogus, dictatorial government “solutions” to any and every difficulty we encounter in life. The Democrats are increasingly “The Party of No Personal Responsibility.”

    4 – “Children are the future of this country.”

    - It’s our childrens future liberty and economic stability that is being mortgaged out of existence by our profligate government.

    And the Democratic politicians’ promise that they will drastically expand entitlements while *reducing* the deficit is a sick joke. The CBO numbers are an exercise in GIGO (garbage-in, garbage out), since they are a based on the bogus assumptions the Dems gave the CBO to work with (e.g. Medicare “cuts” that aren’t going to happen, and if they did would only drive more doctors out of medical practice than the Dems’ proposed legislation is already sure to do).

    We are, with the current congressional majority’s intentions, looking at the prospect of a greatly-reduced future supply of medical providers, which is just the opposite of what our children will need in order to have good, affordable medical care.

    “How can our sick, unhealthy children, and young adults can compete with the Chinese , Japanese , and European children in the future?”

    - This characterization of our children is by-and-large inaccurate, so the question is absurd. A more sensible question is: How miserable will people in countries with rationed (socialized) care become as their health care systems become less and less solvent?

    5 – “Millions of people use Emergency rooms as primary care .Thousands of Americans file bankruptcy every year because of health care bills, and at the end we still have to pay for them anyway, so why can’t you find the smarter way out?”

    - A smarter way out is indeed called for — smarter than the Democrats current proposed legislation, that is.

    6 – “Why do we spend the most on health care but still have 50 millions without health care with a broken system?”

    - For one thing, our health care is expensive because it is very advanced, i.e., in many ways it is very good. People are living longer with diseases that used to much more quickly kill people off, and that is because of the kind of innovations that socialized medicine will put a big damper on. Also our current system has many perverse incentives that encourage unnecessary procedures, insulate consumers from costs (hence inevitably inflating costs), and insensibly make routine treatment a matter of “insurance,” among other problems. Socialized medicine won’t fix this “broken” system, but it will certainly make it more “broke.”

    7- “why don’t You learn anything from housing crisis ? Like housing cost in the past. Health care cost now is sky rocket(ing) and many experts predict the next big crisis will be health care so millions of our people will die if health care reform failed.”

    In case you didn’t notice, government meddling (making houses “affordable” to people who actually couldn’t afford them) had a great deal to do with inflating home prices, leading to the bursting of the bubble. However, the price of socialized medicine is extremely unlikely to collapse the way real estate prices did. Entitlement programs are notorously difficult/impossible to kill off. So instead what we will see is more and more stringent rationing of care, more “cost controls” (provider payment reductions) which will even further reduce supply, leading to still stricter rationing.

    Such are the “benefits” of villainizing people who provide things (insurers, health care & pharmaceutical providers) and making the product of their labors a “right” that other people are “entitled” to.

  4. Charlie says:
    March 20, 2010 at 8:03 am

    This program is misnamed. It is not “healthcare” reform, it is insurance reform. Everyone currently gets healthcare. Uninsured goes to the ER currently and we pick up the tap. This is simply more of Obama’s redistribution of wealth. He will find out the hard way come November, along with Mr. Etheridge.

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