KMPH Fox 26 Central San Joaquin Valley News Source in Fresno, California Entertainment, News, Sports and Weather | Congressman Radanovich Hosts Town Hall in Kerman

Congressman Radanovich Hosts Town Hall in Kerman

By Clint Olivier

KERMAN - 19th District Representative George Radanovich hosted more than a hundred of his constituents at a town hall meeting inside a Kerman warehouse.

Its purpose: give folks a chance to share their feelings on the Congressional plan to reform the American health care system.

"It's important, health care is important to everybody so it affects every single American, so it's important to get it right," Radanovich said.

The congressman says there's no hurry to get something passed.

Radanovich says he's focused on reforming access to healthcare, taking a plan with you if you move out of state and dealing effectively with people with preexisting conditions.

"Like the woman who had breast cancer who was here earlier who can't get coverage because of that," he said.

This is who Radanovich is talking about.

Doreen Silva is a ten year breast cancer survivor.

She's getting by on state health care... for now.

"But if I get a full-time job or even so many hours a week, I lose that access in five months," Silva said.

A bombshell in Washington Monday, as the accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers released a study saying the reform bill in the Senate will increase a typical family's private insurance premium 17 hundred dollars over the next five years and up to four thousand dollars in the next decade.

"If we want to make these markets reforms work we have to get more people in the system, Robert Zilkerbach said."

Back here in the Valley, Doreen Silva says she just wants a chance to get into the system, something her congressman says he will work hard to do for all Americans.

"But right now it's about the insurance companies, and some people are worried about leveling the playing field for insurance companies instead of people," Silva said.