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Text of Rep. Glenn Nye (D-Virginia Beach) regarding his planned vote on the health care bill:
Washington, DC – Citing potential problems for TRICARE recipients, the cost of the bill, and cuts to children’s hospitals, Congressman Glenn Nye announced this evening that he will vote against adopting the health care proposal under consideration in the House of Representatives.
“Over the past year, I have spoken with countless small business owners, families, medical professionals, and average citizens across Virginia’s 2nd District, and it became very clear that this bill was not the right solution for Virginia’s health care challenges,” said Congressman Nye. “There were many strong points in this bill that I would have been happy to support individually, but the package as a whole had serious problems.”
The original version of legislation in the House had specifically exempted TRICARE from being affected. However, when the final bill language was released on Thursday afternoon, it was revealed that neither the Senate bill nor the reconciliation package contained an exemption for TRICARE.
“Our military families need to be able to count on their health care benefits, and I am not willing to risk negative consequences for our military personnel and their families, particularly at a time when our troops are serving overseas in harm’s way,” said Nye.
Nye also expressed concerns about the potential for severe cuts to children’s hospitals, including the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk. The House version of the health care legislation, which Nye opposed last November, would have resulted in a $10 billion annual cut in funding to children’s hospitals. Rather than addressing this problem, the final package actually increased the cuts to $16 billion.
“This bill did not fix the key flaws with the original health care bill, including devastating funding cuts for CHKD in Norfolk and I am not convinced it will effectively reduce the cost of health care for families and small businesses,” said Congressman Nye.
Despite his opposition to the legislation, Nye reiterated that he is committed to passing meaningful reforms of the health care system. “There are commonsense steps that we can take right now to make a real difference for Americans: repealing the antitrust exemption for health insurance companies, creating a high-risk pool for people with preexisting conditions, establishing an exchange that allows families and small businesses to have more choices, and cracking down on fraud and abuse,” Nye said.
“I know there are some people who will be disappointed with my vote, but I believe that I have a firm duty to vote my conscience and represent the best interests of my district. As much as we need health care reform, we also have an obligation to enact responsible changes for the American people, and to restore their trust in government,” Nye concluded.
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By Nye
Hope you can accomplish something in the remainder of your term.
Healthcare reform will save lives
More Americans will have access to healthcare with healthcare reform. Lives will be saved. Nye cares more about money and politics than saving lives. To vote no is equivalent to voting for people to die.
Quit drinking Obama's cool-aide
What will happen is that people will opt out of paying for health insurance, and instead pay the $750 fine per year for not having it. Then, when they get seriously ill or get seriously injured, they will find an insurance company, and the law will now require that insurance company to "pick up" that individual with his or her pre-existing condition, at the same premium I pay.
The result of millions of people pulling this stunt: My premiums go up.
On the other hand, this law does NOTHING to incraase the number of healthcare providers, and next to NOTHING in the way of reducing the costs associated with health care. If anything, doctors will now be flooded by appointments for people with minor ailments that don't require professional help, because Uncle Sugar is now paying for the doctor visit.
Congratulations, dems - your bill will make the healthcare problem even worse.....
Health Care Reform
Sorry to here you will vote NO to health care reform Mr. Nye. Good luck come November.
With Our governor....
eliminating over 30,000 jobs in Virginia through the public education system.....you will also see 30,000 Virginians with out health care.....all at the hands of our jobs governor.........How very disappointing it is to find that neither our governor nor our congressman pay attention to the needs of Virginians......even more disappointing is the fact that most of the people on here could care less about Virginians either.
This is a bad decision Mr. Nye....the GOP hysteria generating machine wins again.
bad bill
This is not and has never been about health care. This is all about expanding government, for gods sake there are 117 new departments created, what does that tell you? Massive government expansion for no net benefit. Massive cuts in medicare with no net benefit.
There is nothing in this bill that reduces the costs. As a matter of fact premiums will be higher under this bill and nothing is done to drive down actual cost. The overwhelming majority of all Americans do not want this legislation to be passed. Million of Americans will loose their insurance and possibly their jobs because small businesses just cannot afford this mandate.
Another effort to buy votes for a lousey healthcare bill
Isn't it just special that the House voted yesterday to exempt Tricare from the legislation? That seems to me to be another effort to "buy" votes of the representatives who know this bill stinks. If you think that military retirees are going to be spared in the long run, then you should reconsider the indifference generally shown to veterans who don't live in a VA service area. The entire process has been to "save" an incompetent president an embarrassment so he can move forward to add 30 million undocumented aliens to a status where they become a perpetual, legal burden for American taxpayers. (You will notice that none of the census or survey questions ask if the respondents are reporting citizens or non-citizens in their households.) This is just an ongoing, misguided effort of the Great Society to "fix" a situation of millions of people who are equally dedicated to make little or no efforts to fix their own circumstances. One would hope that Nye has determined to vote against this bill because he knows it will only exacerbate the instability this nation is experiencing because of other well-intended federal policies that encouraged corporate greed and rampant increases in pri
Nye
I am the wife of a military retiree and I am also on Social Security..I cannot have Tircare until I am 65, and I am too young for Tricare for life but government is pressuring me to take medicare by fining me 10% for every year I elect to use private insurance and believe me BC/BS is not a good company but it is hard to find a doctor who takes medicare..now if either party would pay attention to the problems with veterans (like the VA health care system( no arm braces for us but $1800 Herman Miller chairs for them), homelessness, the fact that all parties forgot to add VA guaranteed home loans into the Fanny/Freddy assistance) and stop ignoring us..wow, that'd be nice. As for Nye, he is nothing more than a Republicrat..a Republican dressed like a Democrat.
Where's the full statement?
It would be nice if the Pilot would link to the entire statement by Nye. Why? Because the House voted this afternoon on legislation that would in fact exempt Tricare. Glenn Nye voted for that legislation. So it seems strange to me that he would then cite no exemption for Tricare as a major reason for not voting for Health Care Reform.
I believe that IS the full
I believe that IS the full statement. It's in press release form.