(written by Pauline Olvera)
Two 9.12ers and I accidently stumbled on an impromptu town hall meeting in Douglas County Saturday, February 27th hosted by State Representative Carole Murray (R) District 45 and State Senator Mark Scheffel (R) District 4.
They talked a lot about how taxes and fees were burdening our small businesses and driving them out of business and/or driving businesses out of the state. They talked about how they were attempting to fight those taxes and trying to make it easier for small businesses to continue driving our economy and creating jobs.
When asked about the Medical Marijuana issue, most constituents in the room were extremely upset about the passage of this law.
There was some debate regarding whether we should fight to repeal the law, make the laws stricter etc… When someone suggested the idea that we should “tax this business out of our state or out of business", Sheffel answered (and Murray agreed) something to the effect that we should be careful in taxing these business because taxing marijuana distributors could legitimize their business.
Education was a subject that was discussed as well. Carole Murray mentioned that both President Obama and our state Speaker of the House Terrance Carroll (D-HD7) were both in favor of Charter Schools. I asked for clarification and she reiterated that “Yes. President Obama and Terrance Carroll were both in favor of and supported Charter Schools.”
I had a brief discussion with Carole Murray after the event.
I mentioned to her that I believed health care costs were rising partly because of non-tax paying people with no insurance that use the ER’s for basic, non-emergency health care, (i.e. sore throats, etc…) An idea I offered was possibly retracting state law that mandates ER’s to treat these non-emergency patients. To this she responded, “that would be inhumane and no one would agree to that.”
A follow-up idea offered by another 9.12er was to give emergency rooms the authority to guide NON-emergency patients to urgent care clinics for treatment whereby they could be charged a fee based on a sliding scale and she answered, “that’s an idea I might look into.”
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1 comment:
I completely agree that we should stop giving people free, non-emergency healthcare in hospitals. (Who came up with this inane idea in the first place?) This practice is largely abused by illegal immigrants, who run up unpaid hospital bills and suffer no consequences in doing so.
If an American citizen were to run up an unpaid bill, he/she would be forced into bankruptcy, and would then have a very difficult time acquiring jobs, loans, and apartments.
At the very least, American citizens should be on an even playing field with the illegal aliens, and most would agree that an American citizen should have an advantageous position here in our country vs. any illegal alien, under any and all circumstances.
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