Skip to main content
And a letter from Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn responding to good friend Dr. Richard Fisher's letter:


August 6, 2009




Dr. Richard Fisher
8808 Bredbury Cove East
Cordova, Tennessee 38016-6498


Dear Dr. Fisher:

What a pleasure to hear from you. Thank you for contacting me to share your opposition regarding a universal government run health care plan. Hearing from constituents on issues of concern is important to our office and me as we work to represent our district.

Today, more than 41 million Americans are either without health care or participate in a basic system that provides only marginal coverage. As a result of a myriad of state regulations and our current tax code, many small businesses cannot afford to offer health insurance and many individuals cannot afford to purchase health insurance. Additionally, people often fear leaving their current job with employer-based health insurance due to the lack of portability and the limited number of affordable insurance options either for individuals or in the small business market.

Also, the rising cost of healthcare is a troubling problem. According to the most recent Medicare trustees report, total Medicare expenditures are estimated to be 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006, reaching 11.0 percent in 2080. With our rapidly aging society, costs can be expected to increase as more individuals join the Medicare program. Without some true reform, the high cost of health care and the difficulties in obtaining health insurance will continue.

Like you, I do not support a universal government run health care plan. It is my belief that a system like this would take away the ability for you to make decisions about your own health care and put it in the hands of government bureaucrats. The best way to expand health care coverage is by giving the individual the power to choose a medical option with his or her own insurance, not by having a government official tell us what procedures are allowed and refuse to provide additional treatments. As the 111th Congress begins, I will continue to push for reforms that will lower costs and increase health care options for all Americans.

Please be assured of my continued commitment to ensuring Americans have access to health insurance. Congress must do more to expand high quality health care and make it more available and affordable for working families. Our nation must move from today's bureaucracy-driven, heavily regulated health care system to a new patient-centered system of consumer choice and free-market competition. As your Representative, I am committed to making sure that all of Tennessee's families have access to affordable, high quality health care, and I will continue to work hard so that this goal can be realized.

Please know that I appreciate both your interest and time in contacting us on this issue. As the discussion moves forward on this and other issues, please feel free to visit our website at www.house.gov/blackburn where you can sign-up for our email update, learn about constituent services, and find the latest legislative news and critical information that affects and concerns the people of Tennessee.



Sincerely,

Marsha Blackburn
Member of Congress

MB/sm

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reasons We Think America is On the Wrong Course

I was listening to the Michael Medved show yesterday. He does a nice job at talk radio. But he was worked up because the CBS News Poll showed that 72% of Americans surveyed think the U.S. is on the wrong track. (When I went to CBS' site, it looks to me like the number is 69%, but that's an insignicant difference). Medved's view is that income for the poorest citizens are rising (recent government data), unemployment is low, stock market is high, no cold war, so why so pessimistic? Here are my answers: Several of our young men and women are being killed every day in a war that we are getting sick of. The deficit is some unimaginable, staggering number that my generation is imposing on my children. Social Security is bankrupt and both Congress and the Administration (both previous and current, and both Republican and Democratic) are unwilling to face the issue. There are virulent infectious agents in hospitals that are resistent to essentially all antibiotics, and the drug co...
2 comments
Read more

Stimulus Plan

Mr. President: The House stimulus bill is awful. Dangerous. Counter-productive. It has a very high probability of making things worse!. Your man Rahm Emanuel is supposed to be a tough guy: turn him loose on the House Dems - they are selling you down the river. Some simple tests: the spending will improve long-term productivity; the spending will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and the spending will happen fast; very, very fast. There may need to be some legislation to enable spending without years of environmental review. For example, spending on wind farms would improve long-run productivity and reduce dependence on foreign oil. But let's say the wind farm is a couple of miles offshore. You can't have environmental groups stopping the development to see if some fish will be harmed. This spending has to happen now. And, no tax cuts with the possible exception of AMT. People aren't going to spend any tax savings; they are going to pay their credit card bills or r...
10 comments
Read more

Romney/Thompson dream ticket?

The role of Fred Thompson in yesterday's SC primary is as murky as his next step. Did he divide the religious vote and thereby hand Huckabee a loss? Or would those votes, had he not been there, have gone elsewhere? My instinct is that more of those votes would have gone to Romney or McCain than to Huckabee. Fred comes across to me as the thinking person's conservative: thoughtful on positions, a sense of history, a Federalist, serious about the war on terror and prepared to take the long view on it. His addresses have content, not sound bites - which may, unfortunately, be a drawback in 2008. Mitt is quickly seizing the stage as the most knowledgeable in the field on economics, growth and job creation. With a war still consuming dozens of billions, it isn't clear that the race will be won on voters' views of candidates job creation prowess. However, he gives off as much energy as Fred seems to absorb - Mitt's electron shell could power Fred. So, Mitt may be drawi...
5 comments
Read more