Dr. Manny Sethi said Monday In Chattanooga that he is running for the U.S. Senate to make a difference for the people of Tennessee. He told the Chattanooga Pachyderm Club he is a first-generation American who has been living the American Dream. It began with his parents who overcame abject poverty in India and became doctors. They “stood in line, and waited,” and came to this country legally 40 years ago. They first lived in Ohio and retrained as American doctors. The family moved to Hillsboro, Tennessee in rural Coffee County where they were the only doctors in the area and had two sons.
One of those sons, Dr. Manny Sethi, got an undergraduate degree from Brown University and received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He then moved back to Tennessee and has been a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville for the past 10 years.
He said after the early death of his father, he turned to Christ and was saved. It was then he realized that he too would become a doctor. He has lived by what his father taught him which is “it doesn’t matter what’s in your bank account, but the difference you make.” Realizing the razor thin line between life and death, he said he wants to help the most people that he can. One way he can do it is representing residents of Tennessee in the Senate.
He was introduced by Fred Decosimo who said he supports Dr. Manny as a candidate who doesn’t need the job and who would actually be making a sacrifice to get it.
Dr. Sethi told the Pachyderm Club members that in the Senate he would represent Tennesseans as a conservative outsider rather than a Washington insider. He said in his profession where surgeons that he works alongside have differing opinions, he is used to making quick decisions or someone dies. He said he is accustomed to compromising and working with people and that he can make decisions without owing anyone anything.
His platform includes a change in health care by replacing Obamacare with patient-focused policies. He said government should not get between a patient and their doctors and their health insurance. He advocates for a free market plan for insurance with pricing transparency, an individual insurance market with more options, and believes there should be competition beyond state lines. He also thinks that the cost of insurance should be a tax deduction for small businesses. He thinks insurance should pay for prevention before having to treat the disease, comparing it to paying for an oil change rather than replacing a car’s engine. And he said from being on the front line during the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw that the country is too reliant upon China which the U.S. was depending on to supply masks and medicines to treat the virus. “We need to end our dependence on China. We need a second industrial revolution to bring jobs back,” he said.
Addressing the opioid crises, he believes that treatment is not a one size fits all situation and that local officials should be given power to create solutions. Faith based, 12 step recovery programs are another way to approach the problem as opposed to treating addiction with more medications, as is now being done and not working, he said. And his view on abortion is that life begins at conception.
An end should be put on illegal immigration, he said. He has lived the American Dream because his parents came here legally. He supports President Trump and building a wall. He also said there should be an end to “chain-based immigration, which he termed as not fair. People coming to this country need to make meaningful contributions.
The country is now $26,000 trillion in debt, created partially by career politicians and the culture of Washington, he said. We need to get spending under control, he said. The problem worsened with the recent stimulus packages described as “throwing cash out of helicopters, hoping it would land in the right place.” He said that a stimulus package should be strategic. He also believes that discretionary programs should be cut.
In response to a question on his view about police reform in the current climate of what is happening in our cities, he said his position is that 99 percent of police officers are not bad. After treating officers who have taken bullets, he said, “I will always stand with the police. “All the garbage about defunding police is wrong.” Protests are American, he said, but rioting is terrorism.”