For nearly 25 years, Brother Kelly McCutchen ’89 has been working to make an impact for the people of Georgia as the President and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Recently, McCutchen had the chance to sit down with former Georgia Congressman and current U.S. Secretary of Health Tom Price.
“I’ve known Tom Price for about 20 years,” McCutchen says. “Knowing him for a long time, he invited us to come to his office in Washington to talk about national health care. It was a pretty exciting time to be up there.”
Indeed, as of the early afternoon of Friday, March 24, the House of Representatives was still debating President Trump’s healthcare bill, which would repeal and replace Obamacare. Most reports indicated that it would come down to the wire as to whether or not Republicans would get the 218 votes needed for the bill to pass.
“Price was (optimistic that the bill would pass),” McCutchen says. “It’s taken a little bit of a delayed pattern right now. He feels confident. Of course, he’s been working on this for a long time. He was one of the first congressmen to say we need to repeal and replace. But he wrote out all the details. He understands how bad the Affordable Care Act has been for a lot of families who can’t afford the premiums and can’t see the doctors they want to.”
According to McCutchen, even if the current bill doesn’t become law, he thinks the Republicans will work something out.
“There will eventually be something,” he says. “I don’t know long it’s going to take them; it’s hard to get people to agree on anything up there. I think eventually there will be a series of smaller bills.”
McCutchen has been with the GPPF since 1993.
“The issues change all the time,” he says. “Healthcare, education, criminal reform, environmental issues. I’m sort of a jack of all trades, master of none. You feel like you’re really making a difference. You see things go from an idea on a page to a law that impacts millions of people.”
As part of his work, McCutchen gets to travel all over the state.
“I get to meet different people,” he says. “I grew up in a small town—Ellijay, GA in the mountains. I really enjoy getting out of the city and going to see all of the different small towns and get to the farmers and small business people and all across the state. I’ve seen most of our military bases. Georgia is a very big and diverse state. You really can’t appreciate it until you get to travel and see all the different parts of it.”
And when he’s not traveling, McCutchen, who lives in Atlanta, loves getting back to campus for Tech football and basketball games. In fact, he was considering a trip to New York to see the Yellow Jackets in the NIT tournament.
“They’re fun to watch,” he says of the year’s edition of the Yellow Jackets. “They play together as a team.”