Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed State Representative Bob Ramsey (R-Maryville) to the newsmaker line to clarify HB946 which he co-sponsored and weighs in on Governor Lee’s proposed budget for Titans Stadium renovations.
Leahy: We are joined now on the newsmaker line by State Representative Bob Ramsey. Good morning, Representative Ramsey! We’re delighted to have you on.
I believe this is the first time you’ve been on our program. Tell us a little bit about your background. You’re from Maryville. You’re a dentist. Tell us how long you’ve been serving in the state legislature.
Ramsey: I’ve been in public service for about 32 years, county commission 20 years in Blount County. And then 14 years as a state representative from District 20.
Leahy: That’s quite a long record of public service. You’re also a dentist. Do you continue your practice while you serve in the state legislature?
Ramsey: I did serve the first maybe five or six years, but I retired about seven years ago.
Leahy: Did it get to be a little bit too much to do both?
Ramsey: It did. It was quite a burden. And I’m 75 years old, so I was about the age that I needed to rest.
Leahy: A spring chicken at 75.
Ramsey: Let’s hope.
Leahy: (Chuckles) I’m so glad you came on. Can you bring us the latest bill that a group called Stand for Health Freedom, a couple of bills that they were critical of that you were a co-sponsor of?
Can you bring us up to speed on this? I guess one of their criticisms was that there was one bill that added the HPV vaccine to COVID-19 vaccines that dentists are authorized to administer, I guess, without parental consent under state law. Do we have that right? And have things changed on that particular bill?
Ramsey: Things have changed on the bill as far as its progress. This bill, the Tennessee Dental Association had brought to me this year and they had determined that they wanted to add HPV vaccines because probably 70 percent of oral cancers are caused by HPV viruses.
There are several of them, and they wanted us to add that plus seasonal flu to the code that allowed them to give the COVID virus immunization that we passed last year that made it permanent, that they could give the COVID virus immunization.
All they wanted to do was add those other two. And the way that bills like this work is agencies or institutions that are involved in the bill, which the Tennessee Medical Association would because they had an issue with the fact that the dentist would be able to give seasonal flu vaccines.
So we were asked to amend the bill so that they would not oppose it. And so we took the seasonal flu out of it with an amendment. And so that’s what was seen last Wednesday, I guess.
Leahy: Yes. If you can help us kind of understand this, the issue that this group Stand for Health Freedom, the way they portrayed it, and I don’t know if this is factually true or not, is that it gave dentists the authority to deliver HPV vaccines and COVID-19 vaccines to minors without parental approval. Was that right? And where does it stand currently?
Ramsey: It is not right. The interesting thing is that for 30 years, there’s been a code in place to allow a specific group of health care providers to give diagnosis treatment to mature minors under the Mature Minor Doctrine of those treatments without parental consent.
The dentists are not in that code description. So with the bill that I had brought, there was no way that it even addressed changing that 30-year-old code so that dentists would be included in that.
So under our practice authority, today as a dentist, we must have parental consent on everything. And the bill that I had did not change that.
And one of the issues of being a chairman is that most of your bills, or all of them unless you requested, are put at the end of each calendar. So we have had about three weeks of meetings where we never got to the end of the calendar.
And so all those bills were kind of lumped together, but they were filed at different times. And so I guess that’s why it made it look like it had something to do with parental consent. But the bill and I think it was 20, 30.
So the Tennessee Dental Association said, look, there’s so much confusion. We have never as long as I practiced and I’ve practiced for 42 years, and we have never been allowed to do anything without parental consent. And nobody wants to change that.
Leahy: I think the bill is 2032. Where is that bill right now?
Ramsey: It was requested by the Tennessee Medical Dental Association to take it off notice.
Leahy: So that means it’s not going to happen?
Ramsey: It is not going to happen.
Swain: Well, that’s good news.
Leahy: That’s Carol Swain, by the way, State Representative Ramsey. Carol, I think, has another question for you.
Ramsey: Sure.
Swain: Well, it’s a statement, this whole thing about the COVID vaccines and we know now from the numerous breakthrough cases and there’s every evidence that the vaccines have not worked and that they may actually be damaging people’s bodies, do you know if the state health departments are taking into consideration the data that’s coming from all over the world about the vaccines and the harm that they’re doing to people?
Ramsey: My understanding of the Department of Health is that they try to keep, I guess, the best communication possible with the CDC and AMA and other folks that seem to gather and consolidate that information, and we tried to go by their guidelines.
Swain: Well, that’s a problem.
Listen to the full interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Bob Ramsey” by Tennessee General Assembly.
We need a bill…. one that says that after a municipality in Tennessee passes the population level of 150,000, that they are required to build a top level professional football stadium (dictated by current NFL policy), a top level NBA arena and a Major League Baseball stadium. All funded by a coalition of the Tennessee and municipal taxpayer, of course…. they can’t be great cities otherwise!