Kennedy Responds to Foxx Health Care Town Hall

STATESVILLE, N.C. — Fifth District Congressional candidate Billy Kennedy attended Representative Virginia Foxx's town hall event this morning in Statesville. Following the event, Kennedy said, "After Rep. Foxx's town hall today, I searched the Constitution to see where it says we taxpayers are supposed to be subsidizing her personal health care insurance. I couldn't find it."

"You see," Kennedy continued, "Rep. Foxx says unless something is expressly written in the Constitution, then we the people have no right to want or expect it. In fact, that was the exact question I had for her today (had I been called on). I wanted to know, since she's been a politician for the last 27 years, when was the last time the taxpayers weren't subsidizing her insurance?"

Kennedy continued, "It's fine for Ms. Foxx to stand up there today and tell folks that they need to handle their own health care costs, that the government can't do anything right (so why even try?), and that our current system is the best in the world, when she lets the government handle her insurance needs and expects us to hand over our hard-earned tax dollars to support it."

A key moment in the town hall came when a gentleman stood up to talk about how his son had tried for seven years to get government disability due to his cystic fibrosis. The man choked up recounting how his son had died shortly after he got disability benefits. Ms. Foxx's reply was, "Government shouldn't have been handling this."

Kennedy said, "If government shouldn't be handling it, who should? Does Representative Foxx honestly believe private insurance would have done the right thing? There is certainly nothing in the Constitution about helping out people who have a disability, so I guess by her view, she's right."

"But for people hurting under this present for-profit system, she's just wrong. Her solutions are for this country to do the least possible for our people because she doesn't believe in government. We can and should do better than this for the people of Western North Carolina."