As of one minute before midnight, Friday, January 24, eight people had formally filed, with the Indiana Secretary of State, as candidates for the May 5 GOP primary for Indiana’s Fifth Congressional District: Kent Abernathy, Andrew Bales, Rev Micah Beckwith, Allen R Davidson, Matthew Hook, Danny Niedergerger, Russell H Stwalley, and I.
Three people whose names are absent from that list, but who have announced their candidacies, are Dr Chuck Dietzen, Indiana Treasurer Kelly Mitchell, and Nurse Beth - that is how she refers to herself on her website - Henderson.
I hope Dr Chuck, Treasurer Mitchell, and Nurse Beth realize they only have until noon, February 7, 2020, to file a CAN-2 form with the Indiana Secretary of State. Although U.S. House is a Federal office, for which a specific form must be filed, CAN-2 must be filed, too.
CAN-2 is available on the Indiana Secretary of State’s website. The form itself has to be filed with that office’s Election Division, located on the second floor of the Indiana Government Center South. You can ask at the Information Desk what elevator to take.
Dr Chuck Dietzen is a medical practitioner whose statement about The Constitution is (at best) vague and whose positions on health care, when not vague, are, like his vague concept of rights, ill-founded.
First, as to the Constitution, Dr Chuck is quoted, in an October 3, 2019, article in The Kokomo Tribune, as saying “we must protect our constitutional freedoms.” That is vague, but also is a statement founded on error. There are no “Constitutional freedoms.”
Our freedoms - and our rights - are protected, not created, by The Constitution. According to Linda R. Monk, a legal scholar, writing for npr: “A right is a power or privilege that is recognized by tradition or law. Natural or human rights are inherent to human nature; they are not given by government, but neither does government always protect them.”
Unless Dr Chuck spells out specific “Constitutional freedoms” he believes we need to protect, I can say nothing. For example, if he believes we need to protect rights of people - regardless of sex or gender - to marry, I shall agree with him.
Second, in regard to health care, Dr Chuck says a couple of scary things. In an IBJ article, 10/03/19, he is quoted: “health care means that we have a healthy workforce, and a healthy
workforce means we have a healthy economy...”
He did not say health care means people can realize “life, liberty, and happiness,” as stated in The Declaration of Independence. Instead we need to make sure that people can be healthy for the “workforce.”
Dr Chuck does not mention a concomitant duty of employers - who, in a free market economy profit from that “healthy workforce” - to foot the bill, as overhead, to keep that workforce healthy. I doubt he would embrace such a utopian concept.
Dr Chuck rears the ugly head of “socialism” as a major foe. From the Kokomo Tribune: “I want to make sure we make healthcare work for patients, and socialized medicine does not work.”
From the IBJ: Dr Chuck “wants to fix the health care system and believes a socialist approach will worsen things for patients.” I noted in other blogs that “socialism” is not a term easily defined, but The American Heritage Medical Dictionary defines “socialized medicine”: as “a term used in the United States to describe and discuss systems of universal health care: medical and hospital care for all by means of government regulation of health care and subsidies derived from taxation.”
As I have said, if “socialized” health care is bad, then the USA’s health care system should be at the top. It is not. In a March, 2019, paper, for quality of health care, we were ranked 37th.
On the other hand, if socialized medicine is so bad, there should be few, if any, countries, ranked ahead of us, in which socialized medicine is a large component of, or comprises the entire system.
Of the 36 countries ahead of us in those rankings, only two are considered either to not have socialized medicine or a large component of its system socialized. Norway, ranked 11th, has a deductible of equivalent of $200. Morocco has mixed mandatory and private insurance.
Dr Chuck does not describe how he would “fix” our health care system. President Obama was able to get the ACA enacted. The ACA had a lot in common with GOP goals - it was based on a prototype created by a GOP administration in Massachusetts.
We should have the same health care coverage as members of Congress enjoy. We are their employers. We should be treated just as well. To pay for this system, we can use money from cutting our military budget in half.
After all the present system bankrupts Americans individually. As I wrote in a previous blog, our current healthcare system has been effective at bankrupting people. A study last February found 66.5% of bankruptcies were tied to medical issues. 109 Amer J Public Health No. 3, p. 411, 02/06/19.
I think Dr. Chuck needs to read up on some things, as described above. In the meantime, he needs to file that CAN-2 form.
I am Mark Small, a candidate for U.S. House in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District. I am proud to be a progressive. We need to do the obvious and reign in several fiscal policies: tax cuts for the very rich and idiotic military spending. I approve of this blog. Hell, I wrote it.