Tough Questions for Rep. Marshall at Town Hall April 1, 2017

 Next Town Hall:  Friday, April 14, 8:30 a.m. in Junction City, at the C.L. Hoover Opera House, 135 W. 7th St.  

Town Hall with Rep. Marshall in Manhattan on April 1, 2017:  Standing Room Only!  

Standing Room Only at the Town Hall!

On April 1, all the questions, and all of the questioners, were excellent!  

A pretty good description appeared the following day in the Manhattan Mercury, in an articled entitled "Marshall Ducks Questions at Forum."  That article is appended to the end of this post.

I was so happy that my camera picked up three of the presentations, and a fourth arrived via cell phone and YouTube (Thank you, Dr. Sarah!).

First is the statement by Dr. Sarah L. Wesch.  

Dr. Sarah Wesch at Rep. Marshall's Town Hall

Her message to Dr. Marshall?  

"Please be courageous.  Address corporate greed in health care!"

Here is a video of her presentation.  Some of her ad libs are great!  The video is followed by a longer written statement which she left with the congressman:

Dear Congressman Marshall, 

I noticed on your website that you were disappointed with the recent failure of the American Health Care Act. I don’t think you’ll find an American who doesn’t agree with you that health care costs are a serious problem facing our country. My concern is that the failed Republican proposal was aimed solely at reducing the cost of health insurance. While it is essential that we find ways to lower the cost of health insurance, I believe that there is an important distinction between lowering the cost of health insurance and lowering the cost of health care.

We can lower the cost of health insurance in a number of ways. We can simply charge more to those who have chronic illness or who are high risk for needing care, such as pregnant women or the elderly. We can just avoid providing care to those who are too ill or too disadvantaged to have a job with health care benefits. These are some of the ways that we can lower the cost of health insurance. This is what health insurance companies have done for years to help keep their bottom line profitable. And, it has worked quite well, for the insurance companies. In no other country are there for-profit, publicly-traded health insurance companies that skim off 20% of the the national health care spending into their own pockets. In 2014, the CEO of United Health Care came away with 66 million dollars in income. 66 million dollars for one person.

What I want you to consider is how you can make meaningful changes in our healthcare system that will not just bring down insurance premiums, but will lower the cost of the healthcare. The United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country yet has some of the worst health outcomes. We have the highest maternal and infant mortality rate among the developed countries. It’s a disgrace.

Please consider introducing money saving changes that can provide universal, affordable health care. This doesn’t mean that we need to extend Medicaid. I would like for our country to learn from the successes of countries like France and Germany, who do not have socialized systems of medicine. They have less government spending on healthcare per capita than the United States. Everyone contributes a percentage of their income and everyone has health coverage of their own choosing. They use private insurance companies. The difference is, their insurance companies are all, private not-for-profit with administrative costs of 5% or less on the basic health plans..

Americans need courageous representatives in the national government who are willing to consider dramatic reform in the way that our healthcare system works. We need to relieve our employers from the burden of providing healthcare. We need to develop a system, working with private, not-for-profit companies that can provide basic health care coverage without taking an absurd amount of profit out of the system. We need to address the price gouging, advertising and administrative costs found in the pharmaceutical industry. We need to streamline our system by using Smartcards for medical records, reducing the staffing needed to manage a healthcare office. And finally, we need to take steps to improve the health of our country by considering how our agricultural subsidies have changed the American diet, leading to world record levels of obesity, which surely contributes to our poor health outcomes and health care costs.

A system that merely focuses on lowering the costs of health insurance is one that pushes our most vulnerable citizens to the side. As health care costs continue to rise, making basic health care a privilege, rather than a right, is a form of social genocide. It’s unsustainable and needs to change.

Thank you for listening to me.
Dr. Sarah L. Wesch

Next, Dr. Ron Young asks Dr. Marshall what he means by "patient-centered care."    How can care be "patient-centered" if people don't have coverage?

Rep. Marshall was not able to put any substance to the slogan.  He answered with another slogan--about doctors and patients making decisions, "not bureaucrats in Washington."  Rep. Marshall should be above empty sloganeering, and I think he knows it, because (if you listen carefully at the end, when Ron offers to help him with substance) Rep. Marshall says, "Touche'."

In this third clip, a member of an immigrant rights group tells of one of the many injustices which his particular organization is trying to combat.  The members of his group, all of whom hold Masters or Ph.D degrees, are here on visas for highly-skilled workers.  They are not allowed to start businesses or change jobs or protest their pay or working conditions.  The man on the left said that too often they are treated "like indentured servants."   The man speaking in this clip says that his wife if not allowed to work part-time, even though her recovery from an illness requires that she slowly build back up to full-time.

Rep. Marshall opened the Town Hall with a Christian prayer, asking us all to bow our heads while he prayed "in Jesus' name."  He asked this of a room that included Jews, Muslims, Hindus, skeptics, agnostics, and atheists, as well as many Christians who just hate to witness, let alone be asked to participate in, a micro-aggression "in Jesus' name" against those of other faiths.

Rep. Marshall said that he was glad he was in several legislative groups that opened every session with prayer.   This assertion was met by the raising of the sign at the right.






This constituent (in the clip below) says (to cheers) that he believes in the separation of church and state, so normally he would not mention religion at a congressman's town hall.    But, he explains, Rep. Marshall's discussion of his legislative prayer-practices has compelled him to contest Rep. Marshall's recent statement that, "as Jesus said," the poor are always with us.   

This article from the Manhattan Mercury gives a good overview!

Remember, next town hall is April 14, 2017, 8:30 a.m., in Junction City at the C. L. Hoover Opera House, 135 W. 7th St.