Debate confronts national issues
Healthcare, education, same-sex marriage and Afghanistan were just some of the topics up for debate between the College Republicans (CR) and College Democrats (CD) Wednesday night.
Tyler Allen
Issue date: 11/16/09 Section: News
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Bloch School student body president Roger Moore attended in hopes of learning more about CR.
"I do a lot of work over there (Bloch School) for a lot of spirited capitalists, and so I wanted to see how the forum will work tonight because I'd be interested in joining College Republicans," Moore said.
The Republican panel included CR president Rachael Herndon, CR treasurer Patrick Shami and law student Hampton Williams.
Representing CD were CD president Rachel Stevens, CD vice president Mike Hardin and law student Chris Miller.
Registered Democrat Jessica Jackson came in support of classmate Stevens.
"Rachel [Stevens], she's in my class and she knows her stuff on healthcare reform, so I'm just interested to hear what she has to say," she said.
Healthcare
The chief topic during the debate was healthcare reform and the public option.
Herndon and Shami said they were not opposed to the public option, but not in favor of the current bill making its way through Capitol Hill.
"I personally am in support of a public option if it's a public option such as public transportation," Herndon said. "We have the right to choose to take public transportation. … We're not going to find that in legislation that's 2,000 pages long and rushed through the Senate."
Williams took a clearer stance.
"I am opposed to the public option," Williams said. "When the government enters the marketplace, it's an unfair competitor. … We can't afford this, and all it's going to do is wreck the market for the 1,700 insurance companies that exist."
Stevens expressed her disgust that some Americans were still without health insurance.
"I think that it's absolutely, un-debatably unacceptable that there are people in the richest nation in the world who die because they can't afford to get coverage," she said.
Stevens argued that there is no incentive for the public option to drive private providers out of business.
"Healthcare doesn't work in the market like every other product," Stevens said. "Insurance companies can set the price at anything that they want, they can provide as poor of service as they want and people will continue to buy their product."
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posted 11/25/09 @ 1:03 AM CST
It was a great event!
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