Tanner Talks Healthcare

By: Marquita Douglas

Posted: 9/2/09

US Congressman John Tanner paid the UTM campus a visit to discuss social security, healthcare, and the overall cost of living with Benita Evans, UTM student, and director of WUTM radio.

Tanner and Evans discussed problems with healthcare. Tanner said the problem with healthcare can be fixed and assured students that when the time comes for them to retire, better social security benefits will be there for them.

"Compared to the medicine situation, Medicare, and Medicaid problems, social security is a tropical breeze, and Medicare is a category five hurricane. You can tweak the social security formulas just a little bit and it will be fine," Tanner said.
Tanner also said the healthcare situation today is not a crisis, but a healthcare affordability problem.

"Small businesses particularly are having trouble keeping up with the cost of health insurance, and if your trying to buy an individual health policy it is almost impossible to find an affordable policy that would cover you. Big business tells me that what is happening with them is it is impairing their ability to compete in an increasing globalize market place," Tanner said.

Tanner mentioned the cost of healthcare and healthcare insurance premiums are rising far faster than inflation, so one can see that it is an affordability problem and we should try and figure out what works in the system, while fixing what is broken.

He said that he is convinced though that it all cannot be done in one bill overnight. He added that healthcare reform must include healthcare insurance reforms to be efficient and we all must come together, as a whole if anything is going to be done to improve the country's current state with healthcare and social security.

"We have got to somehow get beyond this political divide, red and blue, this debt situation and healthcare is an American problem, demanding an American solution," Tanner said.