U.S. Senator Corker Holds Town Hall Meeting in Smithville and Proposes Affordable Health Care Bill

U.S. Senator Bob Corker has proposed legislation to make health care more affordable.
Corker held a town hall meeting Tuesday in Smithville and discussed health care among other issues. “Our Census Bureau says there are 800,000 Tennesseans today that don’t have health insurance. It also says we have about 47-million Americans at any one point and time, not everyone at once, that do not have health insurance. I know those numbers are disputed all the time and it doesn’t matter. The point is there’s a lot of people in our country that don’t have health insurance and I think it’s one of the major issues that those of us who have the privilege of serving in the capacity that I do, need to deal with. I think we have a moral obligation to deal with that issue.”
“Some of the major company CEO’s in America are in Washington lobbying to go to a single payer government run health care system. The reason they are doing that is because they are obviously facing International competition, it’s a cost in their product, and they don’t feel like they can compete. So you combine those efforts with the fact that we have a lot of people in our country that don’t have health care benefits, and my concern is that if we don’t do something in this country to provide the opportunity for every American to access private, affordable, quality health care, then I’m afraid that we are going to move toward government health care, which I think would be bad for our country.”
“I’ve offered a bill in the Senate, named “The Every American Insured Act”. This bill looks at the tax code and makes some changes that create an opportunity for every American to have access to at least, through tax credits, a major medical policy. It is absolutely revenue neutral, meaning that it doesn’t add one penny to the federal deficit. By making sure that everybody has access to health insurance, it does away with the cost shifting that occurs in our health care system. Today, if you have a private health insurance plan, the cost of insuring you is in that plan, but also the cost of those 47-million Americans that don’t have health insurance and show up in the emergency room is also in that plan, because somebody has to pay the tab, and so by everybody having access to private health care, it actually lowers the cost of insurance to each individual in the country.”