Last possible min. HCR Town Hall meeting in NC 5th district. I now want to throw my jacket away.

Mira

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Mon Mar-15-10 10:06 PM
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Last possible min. HCR Town Hall meeting in NC 5th district. I now want to throw my jacket away.

Edited on Mon Mar-15-10 10:50 PM by Mira

Virginia Foxx walked up to me, patted my arm, and told me she loved it's colors.

A friend and I drove to the meeting which was announced, as usual, on very short notice, and is a true rarity. Congresswoman Foxx does most of her interactions by phone in arranged call-in meetings.

She seems extremely wary of opposition, and quite frankly, neither the composition of the crowd, nor the setup she had in place (having to catch a plane she said 1 1/2 hours after the start of the town hall meeting)
allowed for a serious confrontation.

Here a few photos, I had not set my camera correctly, but at least you can see who she is, you might remember seeing her grey head bobbing at meetings Michelle Bachman holds, or clips of her wisdom brought to us by Keith and Rachel.

This is her Democratic Challenger, Billy Kennedy

A shot of the audience

And a photo of a person sitting in front of me.

For your "enlightenment" and also to remind you of why her comments often make it to MSNBC shows, I will list a few direct quotes from the Q and A.
But first I want to post the response to her meeting Mr. Kennedy sent out tonight:

http://www.billykennedyforcongress.com/

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Candidate Billy Kennedy responded to Virginia Foxx�s town hall event on March 15, 2010, in Statesville:

After Rep. Foxx's health care town hall today, I searched the Constitution to see where it says we taxpayers are supposed to be subsidizing her personal health care insurance. I couldn't find it.
You see, Rep. Foxx says unless something is expressly written in the Constitution, then we the people have no right to want or expect it.

In fact, that was the exact question I had for her today (had I been called on). I wanted to know, since she's been a politician for the last 27 years, when was the last time the taxpayers weren't paying for her insurance?

  It's fine for Ms. Foxx to stand up there today and tell folks that the people need to handle their own health care costs, that the government can't do anything right (so why even try?) and that our current system is the best in the world, when she lets the government handle her health needs and expects us to hand over our hard-earned dollars not just for our health needs, but for hers too.  

Our health system is indeed the greatest in the world. For her. For those of us who aren't on government programs like Medicare or Medicaid, or Tri-Care or the Federal Health Care plan, not so great.  The saddest moment of the day came when a gentleman stood up to talk about how his son had tried for 7 years to get government disability due to his cystic fibrosis.

This nice man choked up when he recounted how his son had died shortly after he received disability benefits he'd fought so hard for. Ms. Foxx's reply was, "Government shouldn't have been handling this."  Now I thought to myself: if government shouldn't have been handling it, just who does Rep. Foxx thinks should have?

Does she honestly believe private insurance was an option? But then, I checked. Indeed, there is nothing in the Constitution about helping out people who have a disability from the coughing, fatigue, pneumonia and pain of cystic fibrosis. In fact, I couldn't find a single one of those words, so I guess, by her view, she's right.

  Ms. Foxx says she is all about health care reform. She says we need to do something, and that her idea is to lower health costs by expanding Health Savings Accounts, limiting the ability of people to sue if they have been physically injured through the actions of a hospital or their doctor, and allowing insurance to be purchased across state lines.

  Of course all of us know that Health Savings Accounts are mostly just an option for healthy and wealthy families since a lot of us just don't have the money to pay into one in the first place and, even if we did, we could never be able to save enough to pay for cancer treatments out of pocket.  

When someone asked how it would work if we let health care companies sell their policies across state lines since the states regulated the companies, Rep. Foxx replied that working people might not really want "all those restrictions on the health care corporations" anyhow.

Of course, as a wealthy politician who's covered by a taxpayer-subsidized insurance plan regulated by the federal government, she has nothing to lose from letting the rest of us fend for ourselves in an unregulated insurance free-for-all.  

As for tort reform, the Congressional Budget Office says that wouldn't reduce total U.S. health care spending by more than about 0.5 percent.  ...

But I'd be willing to talk that one out with Rep. Foxx--if she'd agree to give up her government health care in return for it.

===================

Just a few from the Q & A :

Question:
Why is the cost of Insurance coverage rising so much?

Answer:
Because Medicare and Medicaid only pay 60 cents on the dollar of the medical bills, and they have to make up the difference. That in turn eliminates more people from having access to health insurance

==========

Question:
Why does Health Care work well in Germany, how do they do it there?

Answer:
I don't have the answer to that, I'll have to get back to you.

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Question:
What is your personal opinion of what will happen with the Health Care Reform Bill?

Answer:
I don't honestly know. It depends on how many arms Obama and Pelosi want to break, and how many promises they are willing to make to get it passed.

==========

Question:
Why are the Costs of Drugs rising so high?

Answer:
The fault lies with the FDA. They take as long as 15 years to approve new drugs.

==========

Statement from a Constituent:

We love you and appreciate you working so hard and being so honest in Washington

Reply:

The Lord gives us all certain talents, and I am honored to use mine to be of service to you.

Health Care in America is not perfect.
We do need to improve it.
But it is still the best system in the world.

The more the government is involved, the more expensive and the more ineffective it is going to be.

=====================

Sadly I also report that while the Questions and Answers were going on, at a place where a person had asked:
"I'm against this bill but something must be done, we are all suffering and WHAT CAN WE DO?", a man was overheard saying, under his breath but audibly: " Well, I wrote to the "insert N word here""!

This is my second time at one of these meetings, one was about a year ago, and I must say I don't really feel all that safe emotionally, and physically.