The lawmaker's small business advisory board calls for lower insurance and drug prices.
By KELLY VIRELLA
Published February 20, 2004
LECANTO - Lower the budget deficit. Reduce income taxes. Get rid of the lawyers and stick it to the pharmaceutical industry.
That's what more than 60 business people gathered at the first meeting of her small business advisory board told Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, she should do.
"Americans pay the highest price in the world for medicine," said Charles Richer, owner of Canadian Meds, an Inverness business that imports Canadian drugs. "All the other countries benefit from our research."
Brown-Waite, who is up for re-election in November, repeatedly assured her constituency that she votes the way they want her to. Ultimately, she would like to see the government cap drug prices, she said.
"Reimportation and the new prescription drug plan is a patchwork solution," she said. "I don't think there will be a real solution until there is the political will to take on the pharmaceutical industry."
The 11/2 hour meeting at Central Florida Community College in Lecanto began with opening remarks from Brown-Waite and Kathleen B. Cooper, undersecretary for economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Cooper gave a diagnosis of the U.S. economy. She said the recession came from the crash of the high-tech stock-market, corporate governance scandals, terrorist attacks and the poor economies of America's trade partners. But she said in the last half of 2003, the economy posted strong gains. The gross domestic product increased 6 percent. Consumer spending grew by 6 percent. Exports are growing at a double-digit rate.
"The U.S. economy looks as if it's set to experience a strong recovery in 2004," she said.
Both Cooper and Brown-Waite toed the party line, emphasizing that Bush's tax cuts have been good for the country and that the president is committed to cutting more and more government programs.
But members of the audience challenged the policies of the Bush administration, which many said weren't probusiness enough.
For example, President Bush just yesterday approved more funding for the National Endowment of the Arts, said Alberto J. Herran, a senior financial adviser for an American Express office in Orlando, who lives in Brown-Waite's district, in Lake County. "They're taxing the wealthy," Herran said. "It's like communist China."
"My biggest concern is all types of insurance - your auto-insurance, your business liability insurance, your workmen's compensation insurance," said George Altman, owner of Altman's Family Pest Control in Lecanto.
Altman said his workers' compensation insurance rate, which is regulated by the state rather than the federal government, was going up 14.2 percent. "It's always the same excuse - it's hurricanes, it's 9/11," Altman said. "I'm working harder now than five years ago and I'm making less money."
One of the biggest concerns in the audience was the trade deficit and the loss of jobs to countries with cheap labor. "Our exports are up," said Betty Skidmore, owner of Skidmore Sports Supply and Action Design, in Crystal River. "But what about all the jobs we're losing to China?"
