Archive: News

With health care and the economy at crisis proportions, Ithaca Oral Surgeon Scott Noren has decided to do something about it.  Next year he will challenge U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary leading up to the 2012 election.  Noren's top issues are fixing health care and campaign finance reform, which he says are inextricably linked.

"Health care is one of the top issues, but it's married intimately with campaign finance reform," he says.  "The insurance lobby has its clutches on the Congress and Senate.  Nothing meaningful will happen until you get rid of lobby money."

Noren says that now is the right time to run for Senate because he isn't a politician, and that his private practice gives him first hand experience of the problems with today's health care.  He says he offers practical solutions, not political ones.

"Coca Cola has 72,000 employees," he says.  "If you lower their health insurance premiums by $100 per month Coca Cola Enterprises saves $7,200,000 per month.  That's one company in the United States."

Noren says there is already a huge health care burden on small business because the insurance lobby gave $46 million to the Congress and Senate last year.  He says the focus needs to be on the regulation of the insurance industry and how policies influence the kind of care doctors give and patients seek.

"When I have to pay $820 per month for a family health care plan how come I'm paying about $280 for a wellness visit?" Noren asks.  "That should be part of it.  You're discouraging people from preventative care.  That needs to go away and that will not cripple insurance companies."

That's something he knows about from a health care provider's point of view as well as from the standpoint of a consumer.  Noren has four children ranging in age from 12 to 23.  One daughter has special needs related to autism.  He and his wife Michelle live with their family in Ithaca, and he says his family supports his run for Senate.


"They know it's a difficult course," he says.  "I have a special needs daughter and this will probably not make it easier at home.  But my family is behind my run.   Like everyone else I think they want to see some progress to get a coalition going."

Noren was underwhelmed when he lobbied then Senator Hillary Clinton's office on health care issues.  He was shuttled to an inexperienced aid with no background in health care.  He says that a problem with many senators today is that their aids write the bills.  He says that he will write bills himself, using aids' expertise and research to hone them once he has written them.

With the New York Democratic machine backing Governor David Patterson's appointment of Kristin Gillibrand to replace Clinton when she became U.S. Secretary of State, Noren realizes he has an uphill climb to win the nomination.

He characterizes Gillibrand as a cookie-cutter politician, following nothing but the party line and riding on Senator Chuck Schumer's coattails.  He plans to challenge her with a grass roots campaign that casts him in the role of a maverick who will look at problems and provide solutions based on what can be done now, taking a stepped approach to complex problems.  In order to do that he'll need to get into the race.

"If you're not going to use the typical Democratic machine there are only two ways you can combat that," he says.  "First of all you have to get 15,000 signatures in a five week period next year, and you have to get 100 in 15 of 29 counties.  Realistically I'm going to try to get an enormous number of signatures in Tompkins County.  Then on a smaller scale, get a lot of college students, interns, and volunteers to get the remainder of the signatures I need in the other areas."

He says his magic number for fundraising is $65,000, enough to buy a substantive full page advertisement in the New York Times.  With that introduction to the rest of New York State he hopes his candidacy will snowball from there.

"Gillibrand might use a traditional cookie cutter type ad, because she is a cookie-cutter type politician," he says.  "She's not going to say we have a real emergency on some of the issues I am talking about.  And she is not going to say things that don't sound pretty because she doesn't want to piss off certain voters."

One thing he says that isn't pretty is that fixing health care can only be accomplished if everybody participates.  It is not something that government can fix by itself.  He says he will do everything he can to make the health care system work, but it is doomed to fail unless everyone fixes their piece of it.

"If you are a doctor or a dentist and you have a million dollar medical or dental clinic you're not helping the health care system," he says.  "You're driving up costs.  If you are 450 pounds and you don't have a thyroid disorder you're not helping the health care system.  If you smoke three packs a day you're not helping the health care system.  It's an 'I want' society.  We need to have our President say you need to get out and walk.  You need to change your diet tomorrow.  Not two weeks from now.  Not a month from now."

Noren says he supports the idea of an upstate New York green technology corridor, and says that robotics is the answer to competing with foreign countries in the manufacturing sector.

"The American Association for Robotics is based in Michigan," he says.  "Where do we have our car plants?  We have all these workers who are used to working with machines.  We could retool the trade and make Michigan and other auto states including New York a premier state for robotically produced goods."

On other issues, his platform is moderate on gun control, pro-choice, cautious about TARP stimulus money, open to a flat tax to replace the complicated income tax.  But Noren's key issues are health care and campaign finance reform.

"I think it's the right time to run not only because I am a health care professional, but because I am a non-politician and a small businessman," he says.  "I think it's better that I'm a health care provider, but even if I wasn't because I am a small businessman and not a politician or lawyer by trade.   I don't have the same motivations on how to run, how to be in office and write bills."

----
v5i26