U.S. House of RepresentativesCandidate for District 4

Dr. Robert (Bob) Derlet grew up in a working class neighborhood of Los Angeles in an era when kids played in the dirt of vacant lots, and dreamed about becoming firemen or racecar drivers. His dad worked for the LA Times/Mirror in street sales distribution.

Bob began after-school work at the early age of eight years, selling newspapers to traffic at the signal light of Santa Monica Blvd/Vine in Hollywood. After-school and summer-work continued through college, at jobs ranging from newspapers, to construction, to cattle ranching, to a boiler room scrub on a Merchant Ship.

The Derlet family moved to Hawaii when Bob was eleven, where he continued school on the island of Oahu. The family returned to LA, where he graduated with highest honors from John Marshall High School. He attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, being the first in his family line to go to a four-year college.

After finishing Medical School, he spent his career at UC Davis as a Professor and Chief of Emergency Medicine at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. He taught medical students, published over 100 scientific research articles, started a training program for specialists in Emergency Medicine, and served two terms as Chief of Staff.

Part-time resident of Twain Harte, CA, for 15+ years, he moved there permanently five years ago wanting to live year-around near the outdoor recreational opportunities of Sierra Nevada. But Medicine called again, so he put in another three years, this time as a front-line primary care physician at a Rural Health Clinic in Tuolumne City. Listening to the many struggles of his patients in navigating a complex healthcare system while trying to stay afloat economically galvanized him to run for Congress.

Bob has four college-educated daughters and three adorable grandchildren.

Wages and Cost of Living
The costs of living - housing, auto expenses, food, healthcare, and education - have rapidly increased while average family income has not. Outsourcing jobs overseas has driven down wages and increased unemployment. I will vote for policies that bring jobs back to the USA and up the minimum wage for all workers.

Consumer Rights
We need to prevent financial institutions and corporations from cheating Americans with their new "gotcha!" fees on bank accounts, credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and consumer goods such as basic cell phone service. I will defend our Consumer Rights.

Education
I will push for legislation to provide all our children and grandchildren with first class educational opportunities that will make them leaders in a competitive world. Our colleges must be affordable and our students protected from predatory lending practices.

Healthcare
Healthcare is outrageously expensive. Much of the money finds its way to profits, at your expense. The healthcare insurance segment retains up to 25 percent of your healthcare dollar. Limiting what insurance companies keep, and capping maximum healthcare charges, would save money for American families and our small businesses.

Social Security and Medicare
The older Americans who helped build this country should not be sold out to Wall Street. Social Security should not be handed over to speculators or hedge funds, as some members of Congress have proposed. Medicare should not be converted to a voucher system that allows insurance companies to dictate your medical care and limit your choice of doctors. In addition, let's work on lowering the Medicare age to 55 years old.

Equal pay for equal work
I support equal pay for equal work. In California, women are paid 84 cents for every dollar paid to men. If the wage gap were eliminated, a working woman in California would have enough money for approximately 59 more weeks of food for her family.

Climate Change
California’s four year drought and the strong possibility that it may continue is an urgent concern to all of us. Our every day lives and the economics of a state whose wealth is strongly related to our agricultural production and the recreational use of its streams, lakes, and estuary are all being impacted by a warming climate.

Once in Congress, I will first press for a workable and sustainable clean energy policy. Second, I will work for recognition that the changing climate will require a  realistic approach to protecting California’s food production. This will require working to improve the management of California’s increasingly limited and drought threatened water supply.