After a month’s hiatus, the Wicomico County Republican Club came back without missing a beat for its meeting this evening. We even had another candidate seeking to unseat longtime Senator Barbara Mikulski in Dr. Eric Wargotz.
First, though, we had to take care of our usual business, which was pretty much standard per previous meetings.
Having dispensed with that brief introduction we got a quick Young Republican report from Marc Kilmer, who was called into duty because the state Young Republicans are also having a meeting this evening. The news Kilmer related is that Salisbury has the inside track on hosting the state YR convention next year, which should attract statewide candidates to our area and be a feather in our cap.
Bob Miller gave the Crab Feast report, which basically consisted of a plea to “sell the tickets” and donate silent auction items – that’s the key part of the fundraiser since we never know how much crabs will cost. (Most likely the $25 cost for an adult ticket doesn’t cover the price of crabs, let alone the other good food we’ll consume September 26th.)
The Central Committee report was actually deferred to the end, but in the interest of making this a better post I’ll note that County Chair Dr. John Bartkovich praised the recent Wicomico Farm and Home Show as a “good venue” for our table there, the GOP booth at the Autumn Wine Fest will need volunteers, and as always we’re looking for good 2010 candidates for “the current (Wicomico County) leadership is not running the county the right way” and 2010 is an “opportunity” that “will be good for us.”
We also had two events plugged – the Republican Women of Wicomico County are having a membership tea at noon Wednesday, September 2nd (at the Main Library in downtown Salisbury) and there will be an Andy Harris fundraiser on September 25th at the residence of Mark McIver, with slated special guest Ellen Sauerbrey.
Those announcements also happened after our featured speaker left the podium.
Actually, Eric didn’t speak from there very long, choosing instead to spend most of the 45 minutes or so we had him on the hot seat answering questions from the 30 or so present.
Dr. Wargotz did note that he began working at the age of 9, asking neighbors about odd jobs he could do to make a few cents. As he stated, he “started learning good old family values at an early age” as he came from a working-class background.
Regarding the upcoming race, while he had all due respect for Senator Mikulski, the race was “not about partisanship…(but) about choosing leadership.” Over the last two terms Mikulski had become “ineffective” and “not demonstrated leadership”, instead becoming “one of the problems” Maryland had to overcome. It came down to the choice between a career politician versus one who had experience dealing with fiscal, land-use, environmental, and business issues and their impact at a local level as a County Commissioner in Queen Anne’s County.
In relation to issues, naturally Dr. Wargotz was “concerned” about the health care conversation, and the topic managed to be the main subject of his overall presentation. But the first question he was asked was how he came to be a Republican.
Eric answered that he was an independent until the 1980 election, when he volunteered to assist Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, and that Republican principles “appealed to everybody.” Aside from a brief detour to the other party for political reasons in the early 1990s (which he admits to) Eric has remained in the GOP fold. He also used that question to state that “I criticize any physician who’s not a Republican” because of the Democrats’ position on tort reform. But he also blasted the current health care debate because it has no discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the current system; instead the debate seems to be how to start anew.
This led to a long question which eventually asked whether the health care reform was more about government intrusion and control, to which Dr. Wargotz affirmed, “unequivocally yes.” He continued, “the issue is not access to care” – since care is mandated by law – but the “question is coverage.” Eric revealed that there is a federal stipend to emergency rooms for coverage of uninsured patients, but not to physicians.
Staying on the health care subject, Eric was asked about how the hurried impetus to universal care will unfold. While he didn’t prefer to dwell on hypothetical questions, Dr. Wargotz did say that because the push to get health care through before the August recess failed, the debate would continue at least until he was installed in the Senate.
A pair of questions unrelated to health care came up next. Wargotz would not have voted to confirm the “disingenuous” Sonia Sotomayor, and, while he was “not happy we’re there” would stay in Afghanistan and Iraq until the job was finished and they had a stable government.
I asked a series of questions based on a handout Eric had from this press release. In addressing what he considered the three health care goals of reducing costs, shortening waiting times, and improving care, he had seven bullet points:
- Keeping government and insurance companies out of the medical decision making process.
- Tackling frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits by capping non-economic damages thus curtailing “defensive” medical practices and reducing waste, abuse & fraud.
- Providing incentives in the health care system to attract more people to become health care professionals.
- Maintaining Medicare, and expand Medicaid to cover those legitimately unable to cover their own costs of care.
- Reforming the health insurance system: no denials based on prior medical conditions & eliminate out-of-pocket expense after fully paid premium; improved provider reimbursement.
- Reforming Pharmaceutical industry towards fair, uniform medication pricing.
- Portability of health insurance between states. (This didn’t appear in his original August 1 release.)
I have no problem with much of that, but desired clarification on some items such as the incentives to attract people to health care, expanding Medicaid, and the reform of Big Pharma.
He couched his answer on incentives to tort reform, asserting the the cost of malpractice insurance was discouraging young doctors from going into some areas of medicine such as OB-GYN. (In answering the last question, Eric also told us that there were plenty of qualified people out there, it’s just many choose to go into other fields like law.) That’s fine, personally I just didn’t want any sort of government bonus or tinkering with the tax code to produce desired behavior.
Expanding Medicaid was a thorny issue, and one which to me shows some political expedience at the expense of ideals. While he agreed with me that the federal government had no place in providing health care (as in Medicaid) that wasn’t truly realistic and expanding the existing program to all those eligible might only cost “a couple hundred million.” Truly, Medicaid is simply a transfer program to the states anyway. So his answer didn’t really satisfy the purist in me but very few people’s answers would (yet.) We did have a good exchange about Article I, Section 8 and the role of Congress where Eric agreed that Congress does exceed its authority in a number of ways.
In speaking to the pharmaceutical industry, Eric said the money they’re promising to Obamacare is really “protection money” but also decried the pricing of drugs in America, saying “their profit margin is approaching that of the retail jewelry industry.”
While answering that, Wargotz got on the tangent of illegal immigration, stating that it needs to be addressed at the same time as health care reform because the issues are entwined – a large number of the uninsured population is illegal. The other noteworthy comment in this stretch was insistence that government interference in personal choice is “a real problem” and constitutes a “dictatorial approach” we should avoid.
Another questioner asked about the insurance mandates such as the ones in Massachusetts. That experiment was “not working well” according to Eric, and leads to another problem if nationalized health care is passed – not enough manpower. “We have a health care manpower crisis”, noted Eric. Also regarding insurance, Wargotz also stated a preference of larger premiums but less co-pay as patients believe that having paid for the insurance they should have to pay nothing out-of-pocket – the write-offs come to thousands of dollars per year. Some in the audience disagreed, saying that the higher co-pays made consumers less likely to abuse the system; at this point Eric said he was “open” to that possibility too.
The next question came from an audience member who was at Rep. Kratovil’s town hall and was told by Frank he wouldn’t increase taxes to pay for health care – so what would Dr. Wargotz say?
First, Eric praised Kratovil for his work as a State’s Attorney but certainly he disagreed with Frank politically; this was no exception. It was quite simple – how can the government provide full coverage without a tax increase? (Well, Eric, they DO print money.) He pointed out that Frank, while a good man who he knew from working with him in Queen Anne’s County, had no previous legislative experience and may have been caught unprepared to be in this particular freshman Congressional class. Instead of leaving it to staffers to read the bill and give him the highlights, Eric pledged “I’ll read the bill first…every word, every page.” That could lead to a lot of reading, but being a doctor he was used to it.
After the question about medical school I alluded to earlier, Eric wrapped up his presentation but stuck around to talk further after the meeting – I left before he did so his dedication was apparent.
It’s clear that the GOP has at least two candidates who can present a credible alternative to the liberal policies of our state’s senior United States Senator. The question will become one of money and how receptive Free Staters will be to a conservative message given their blind loyalty to Mikulski for decades. It’s doubtful she would debate whoever wins the GOP primary so the message will have to be put out little by little to have any chance of success.
The key for Eric Wargotz (or Jim Rutledge) will be how many of the 30 people or so who came out to hear them speak will become their advocates and activists. That will go a long way toward what would certainly be an upset victory in 2010.
