[imgbelt img=P183785.jpg]

One of the people asked to sit in the President’s box during his address to Congress Wednesday night was a rural doctor from Maine. VillageSoup reporter Andrew Benore tells us that Wayne Myers, a doctor and farmer who live in Waldoboro, Maine, was called September 8 about attending the speech.  Myers had participated in one of the White House’s “listening sessions” on rural issues. Myers listened to the speech and then, afterward, met President Obama. (Myers is in top right in photo above.)

“I felt all along Obama should be more outspoken and aggressive about what he was going to insist on rather than waiting for Congress,” Myers told Benore. “If we don’t get the health care problem under control it will flat wreck the economy,” Myers said. “It has gone from eating 3.5 percent of the economy to devouring 17 percent.”

Dr. Myers has helped train doctors to work in rural areas and he served for two years as director of the Office of Rural Health Policy in the Clinton administration. Benore reports: “Myers said better access to heath insurance for rural families would help them do what they want to do, such as farming and starting new businesses. ‘We would see a boom in small businesses developing in rural areas if people had some way to cover the rural health insurance problem,’ Myers said.”

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.