U.S. House Rep. Tom Perriello-D, addressed over 8,000 people in his telephone town hall meeting Thursday night.

“People are engaging in this debate for the right reasons,” Perriello told listeners.

The debate stayed peaceful as Perriello, of Ivy, addressed his constituents on the Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962, which passed the House of Representatives by a 220-215 vote late last Saturday night.

The representative for 5th District noted two major factors in any health care reform for his support. First was costs for the middle class and small business owners.

Perriello stated that there were over 1,200 bankruptcies in the district because of health care costs. He said business were choosing to layoff long-term employees or cut health care.

Perriello also looked for reducing the deficit not only for 10 years but for two decades. He said that you can do many things with the numbers to make it seem the deficit decreased over a decade but not the same for 20 years.

“We will never balance the budget without health care reform,” Perriello said.

While health care will be costly, Perriello said the bill will help companies lower their costs. International companies do not have to pay as much in health care costs because of universal health care. Therefore their overhead is less and have cheaper products.

“We put our companies at a disadvantage because of health care costs,” Periello said.

Also, small business of less than 100 employees can group together. The group collectively can negotiate health insurance similar to large businesses like Wal-Mart Stores can.

The hotly debated public option is in the House approved bill. Perriello wanted, “people in the 5th District to have tons of options.” After looking at the bill, he concluded a public option will help areas that do not have competition in the market currently. While the bill does create intrastate competition, he could not get interstate competition as he wanted. He cited rural areas will benefit the most from the public option.

Another area conservatives were concerned with was illegal immigrants receiving health care coverage through the public option. Perriello assured listeners the bill that passed had a verification system were no illegal immigrants would receive benefits.

During the town hall meeting, listeners were polled if they enjoyed the conversation with the first term congressman. Over 90 percent said they did enjoy it.

Perriello held over 21 town hall meetings in the August Recess including one at Fluvanna Middle School. Not everyone had the chance to ask a question but all listeners were allowed to leave a voice mail for him following this tele-town hall meeting.

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