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twitterProtesters decry GOP stance on health care reform
Democrats organize rally after U.S. Senate Finance Committee vote to omit public option from its bill
Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Sun
Dick Collins marches with other protesters chanting, “We want reform,” as they approach the doors of the Nevada Republican party headquarters Tuesday during a protest rally organized by Nevada Democrats.
Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009 | 10:19 p.m.
Democrats Protest Amidst Health Care Debate
Volunteers with the Nevada State Democratic Party protested outside the state's Republican Party headquarters over health care reform.
Sun Archives
- Vigils held in support of health care reform, public option (9-3-2009)
- Las Vegan’s lost battle for insurance puts face on reform (9-2-2009)
- Harry Reid: Reform a ‘moral issue’ with financial benefits (9-1-2009)
- Hundreds rally against Harry Reid, proposed health care reform (8-31-2009)
- Countering the hysteria (8-26-2009)
- Anti-tax advocates rally against spending, Obama (4-15-2009)
Chanting “Republicans lie, Nevadans die,” about 50 people gathered outside the Nevada Republican Party’s Las Vegas headquarters Tuesday afternoon to protest what they called the party’s obstructionist stance on health care reform.
Angered by a U.S. Senate Finance Committee vote earlier in the day to omit a public option from its version of the health care reform bill, protesters rallied outside the headquarters for about 30 minutes.
Dr. Thomas Kinsora, a clinical neuropsychologist, delivered 220 bandages to the headquarters, which he said represent the 220 Nevadans who lose their health insurance each day.
“The time for small fixes and Band-Aids is over,” Kinsora said. “Americans want fundamental change in the way health insurance is administered.”
Kinsora said he became involved in the push for health care reform because he has seen firsthand how the rising cost and dwindling availability of coverage have impacted his patients.
“As a health care veteran, I have watched health care in this country decline over the last 15 years, primarily because fewer and fewer Americans are insured, and fewer and fewer American employees can afford health insurance.”
Inside the Republican Party Headquarters, only a secretary and a handful of volunteers were present.
They declined comment and directed media inquiries to former State Sen. Joe Heck, a Republican candidate for governor who spoke with the media via phone inside the party offices.
Heck, a physician, said accusations that the Republican Party opposes health care are unfair and untrue.
“It’s not that Republicans have been inactive,” Heck said. “Republicans have come to the table with other ideas to enact meaningful and comprehensive reform.”
Heck said Republican proposals, such as malpractice law reform, requiring members of Congress to participate in the public option and ensuring Medicare funding, have all been dismissed without any serious discussion.
“I think this is our critical message: It’s not that the Republican Party is saying no to health care reform. The Republican Party is saying we have ideas, too, and we want a voice at the table.”
Heck said health insurance reform is just one piece of a much bigger picture, and arguments that focus on reforming health insurance will not go far enough to truly reform the American health care industry.
He also expressed dismay over the tone of the rally, which he said does not further the debate.
“These types of activities divert attention from the true issues that need to be addressed in order to provide meaningful health care reform for Nevadans and for all Americans,” Heck said.
Outside, Kinsora agreed that it would be better to hold respectful debates about health care.
“If we could have an intelligent debate between citizens, it would be nice,” Kinsora said. “But we’ve hit an onslaught from this lunatic fringe that’s doing whatever it can to crush this movement.”
The rally’s other speaker was Marla Turner, a nurse whose own battle with a chronic illness bankrupted her family even though she had health insurance.
Turner said a functional health care system should never allow that to happen and called the Senate Finance Committee’s vote against a public option “completely unacceptable.”
“The industry that I devoted my life to ended up failing me when I needed it most,” she said.
While many of the protesters were affiliated with a union or the Nevada State Democratic Party, which organized the rally, the rally also drew a handful of teens who said they were there because they are worried.
Liliana Valderrama, a 17-year-old student at Western High School, said she was there to call for action because she has no health insurance.
“I think it should pass, because we need it,” she said. “A lot of kids in Nevada don’t have health insurance.”
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50 people? What an embarassment. 50 people? HAHAHAHAHA
That's the best the lib's can do? What a joke.
Thanks to the LVSun to show how pathetic the liberals are in this town.
HAHAHAHAHA
Hate mongers. The inhumanity of it all...
The public option will pass.
But, those who support it SHOULD express their support now to the Senators who voted against it today. They need to hear from you- through emails to their online Congressional contact homepages. Here are a few who voted against the public option:
Charles Grassley
Max Baucus
Thomas Carper
Kent Conrad
Blanche Lincoln
Bill Nelson
Here are three Senators on the Senate Finance Committee who will support the public option in final legislation:
John Rockefeller
Charles Schumer
Max Baucus
Expressing support to Republican Senators and Representatives will not change their positions, which are hardened by funding and dogmas, or their strategies, which flow from those who want absolute power in 2012, including Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, and John Boehner.
Republican objectives are for a final healthcare reform bill which forces everyone to pay for coverage, but costs continue to climb (w/o a public option). This rewards Big Insurance, while Republicans want to hang higher cost-debt outcomes on the Obama Administration later. At best, they want to win back the White House in 2012, and begin the process of "reversing" (that's a word I've heard, REVERSE, from a Republican in the House) other Obama Admin healthcare reform policies that will pass. They also want to keep Obama from obtaining momentum going forward the next two years for legislation to expand rights of labor.
The Republican position is numbers-weak, but calculated. If the stock market were 12500 or more they would have more formidable backing.
Republicans are perpetually polling and running for office. Governing and setting out the right public policy for more than the top 1 percent of society are beyond their "gated community" expertise.
BOTTOM LINE: The Bush years are OVER. The fun, games and spin are over.
FINAL NOTE: I will close with a special shout out to Rick Scott, former CEO of Columbia-HCA, the world's largest hospital conglomerate. Scott is no longer with the company, as Columbia paid $1.7 billion in penalties for Medicare fraud, you know, "overbilling". They had to let him go, not too big to fail.
But, Rick Scott is back in the healthcare game today, running a chain of clinics.
Rick Scott has spent 5 million dollars supporting "Conservatives for Patient's Rights", one activist group behind town hall protests and tea parties. Scott has also hired CRC Public Relations, whose client list includes the RNC. CRC came up with the Swift Boat Campaign.
Rick Scott represents the kind of people REALLY funding opposition to healthcare reform the country needs to remain competitive in business, industry and new technology in a 21st Century World Economy. He's not looking out for doctors and patients, he's looking out for Rick Scott.
i see that seiu was there...nice signs...i thought you union people had great health insurance...soooo why are you protesting?
At a campaign rally on 9-12-2009, in Minnesota Obama said "They can't stop us!" John Podesta said, In the coming weeks, the president and the extensive resources he commands will be used to lavish attention on two groups: Democratic lawmakers and middle-class Americans who are anxious about how the cost of extending coverage to tens of millions of the uninsured will affect their own health insurance and finances. "You have assets you can deploy to make the case and bump up individual members" of Congress, said Podesta.
Mean while ACORN, SEIU, Community for Change, and Organizing for America are also using taxpayer money and selling Obamacare.
RE: isthisreal
It's estimated that healthcare costs US automakers from 2.00 to $3.00 more per employee than foreign competitors making cars in countries where auto makers are not paying those costs through employer based plans.
Union employees are tired of three big things, (1) being mocked for being the cost problem with their USA made product, which there is some truth to that (2) seeing their jobs shipped overseas, and/or (3) losing or renegotiating downward the long term benefits they worked years to earn, as in "it was affordable then, but not now."
Some union labor work their entire lives on the line, to earn those long term benefits they will still need, whereas a corporate officer might put in many more hours and stress for a few years behind a desk, but walk away set for life.
If we don't restructure healthcare, we won't compete, reference market share growth of Kia and Hyundai in the US over the last five years.
Without reform, our social net costs for union people who spent their bodies up serving on a factory line (or casino floor, as another example) will only go up in old age. The trend will continue to be (1) a smaller American manufacturing base, meaning less American jobs that actually make something, providing less benefits that cost more, and (2) bigger state-local government, to service the social nets that take care of more people in need.
San Antonio is sweating a Toyota plant right now.
Is that what America wants, a larger welfare state and smaller, less lucrative job pool (union or non union) in the US? That doesn't sound like America's future objectives to me.
RE: Future
Bush 43 and Republicans boosted Acorn funding, because Acorn does good things in communities, though they have had isolated problems reported which certainly deserve remedy, simple as that. Acorn should be off the national media radar by now. FOX and some Republican interest groups continue to push the Acorn stories to distract from the real, challenging policy making ongoing at Capitol Hill.
National media used to be trustworthy in reporting the news in black and white, and objective investigative journalism. They used to be able to move on. Cable news channels have become tools for special interests and power brokers to come on daily in segments to promote their platforms, book sales, and keep a high profile for a new government job, no different than entertainment people on VH1, MTV, and other channels trying to maintain or restart careers.
Looks like a bunch of losers and life long able bodied welfare addicts to me.
Go out and get a job ya dirt bags so we don't have to pay for raising your children
Gal in the wheelchair holding a sign saying "Standing Together." Very funny!
Looks like an angry white mob.
There are just as many democrats against this as repulicans... why dont they go after them too?
Ah, the usual suspects are back! I wonder why they weren't laughing when the teabaggers had to bus "protesters" in for their big corporate funded "tea party" in August.
It's amazing how a pro-reform event like this one didn't need HMOs and Big Pharma to bus people in from out of state. Rather, people came on their own to protest GOP obstruction to real health care reform. I think that's what scares them.
Let me tell you something "atdleft" I was in Washington DC and I did not meet one person who did not pay their own way to get there - unlike this group who were obviously bused in - oh, and it only took 1 bus - wow, what a statement!
The demagoguery is one thing that irritates me about the health care debate...
Republicans, for better or for worse, have made several proposals for health care reform: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/sidebysi...
The left needs to move away from mindless chants about a public option or the status quo and face reality. We need some honesty (from both sides), but to the left: this isn't reform vs. the status quo.
Greg,
A public option is unlikely to control costs AT ALL. 1) There are probably very few, if any, examples of government ever actually controlling costs short of wage and price controls, and all that does is lead to shortages (in health care that would mean waiting lines)
2) The public option is a third party payer system, JUST LIKE PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE and that is a major part of the problem
3) The public option will subsidize its existence with tax dollars, meaning the government will have to find more revenue. You'll substitute your purchasing power for what you want for health insurance provided by the government. So there won't be any savings.
SEIU will benefit from the passage of the health care bill. Demand Reid to post the health care reform bill on line.
I have a copy of the health care reform bill and the cap and trade. Demand Reid to post both bills on line.
Ask what union organizations will benefit from both bills.
Ask what union organizations will benefit from the Olympics if the decision is Chicago.
Wake up people, Americans are not stupid buy Congress and Senate think we are. The old saying" I'll line your pockets if you give me the jobs".
okay so lets rip off the senior citizens to pay for this idiotic bill and let them suffer....stupid logic...
as far as your union jobs going elsewhere, like overseas, take a hard look at your own democratic party that is taxing the h3ll out of us and returning nothing but spend, spend, spend... no wonder businesses are leaving the usa..
obama and his mouth has hurt the nevada hospitality industry and has caused thousands of casino workers to loose their jobs...so go talk to him he is a democrat...not a republican... remember the cancellatioon of hundreds of conventions? oh that's right you have short term memory loss and can't remember or even recognize that fact!!
as long as your wages and benefits are way out of control, UAW for example, business is going to leave this country for greener (?) pastures....
you idiots marching in front of that office want a free ride courtesy of the taxpayer....take your signs and go home....
yes, healthcare needs to be reformed! but not at the expense you want!!!
i for one believe that when politicians' lips are moving they are lying!
Adtl,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
Democrats bought of the insurance industry already. Remember the spat just a few days ago when Democrats openly fought amongst themselves about betraying the insurance industry?
Staged - Staged - Staged.
Look Ma, angry white people.
They're angry for a good cause, the gop is
angry for a bad one. Now drink the kool-aid.
Btw, Reid just instantly added $4 million to his campaign chest
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/090...
At taxpayer expense, of course.....
When they make more money treating cancer,and other ailments,there wont be affordable health care! ITS ALL ABOUT THE GREED! HOW MUCH CAN I MAKE OFF THAT BAND-AID,OR ASPRIN IN THE HOSPITAL!UNTILL GREED GETS A CURE,MAN KIND WILL CONTINUE TO FAULTER!!!
republicans?
that's funny.
http://intershame.com/on/Max_Baucus__D_M...
democrats are just being paid to not put in the public option.
lol@you
Congress is on the verge of giving itself a bump in its annual budget -- even as local governments, families and businesses across the country are tightening their belts in the worst recession in decades.
Under a House-Senate conference measure, approved by the House last week and poised for passage in the Senate on Wednesday, spending for the legislative branch will increase 5.8 percent this year, boosting Capitol Hill's annual budget to $4.7 billion.
The measure includes a hodgepodge of new funding for lawmakers: a $500,000 pilot program for senators to send out postcards about their town hall meetings, $30,000 for receptions for foreign dignitaries and $4 million for consultants -- with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) getting up to nine each and Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) getting up to three more.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/090...
SOCIAL PARISITES! Let the worthless bums pay their own doctor bills.
What took them so long?
Apparently Republicans never get sick. They must be some kind of mutant, like in the movie "X-Men Origins Wolverine".
The ONLY rational reason I have heard so far, to be against a public option, is it will cost too much. I'll even go as far to say, yes that's true. However, where were those voices when the Bush Admin. decided to invade Iraq? The costs of a public option, pale in comparison to the several trillion Dollars that have been and are being spent in a war that both conservatives, liberals and media who control them, have long relegated to the back pages. This whole debate is ridiculous.
Sorry, but what's good for the gander is also good for the goose. When you complain about irresponsible spending on an issue you don't like and agree with irresponsible spending on an issue you do like... it falls of deaf ears. At least my deaf ears.
I personally have only met ONE person who is against a public option and was also against the invasion of Iraq. Unlike this person, most of us are just sheep, nothing more. And as far as spending goes, with one exception, EVERY president in my lifetime has increased the National debt.
In my mind the Congresspeople and 'media-entertainers' who are complaining about this, are really just grandstanding to their flocks. And don't actually believe a word they're saying. Furthermore those Congress-people ALL ADORE the "socialized health care" they receive and wouldn't give it up for all the tax payer tea parties that Dick Armey could throw in a year.
We only resonate what our keepers tell us to. Obama could say tomorrow that a public option is a bad idea and those who are told they should be liberal, will agree. And Glen Beck could rally for the public option and those of us who are supposed to be conservative, will agree in lock-step.
In reality I feel Obama should have first worked on cleaning up the debacle the Cheney Admin. left us with. Try and bring the two police-actions we are involved with to and end. Then assuming that spending was brought under control, worry about the nearly 1/6th of Americans who don't have health insurance.
In the mean time I will be skipping the pep rallies and the tea parties. And will continue to just try and blend in with the rest of the heard. BA-A-A-A-aaa!
-donald in downtown Vegas
A rational objection to the public option is it is immoral to force someone to pay for someone else's doctor bills against their will. I am responsible for me and my family, and you are responsible for you and your family. I don't see anything very complicated about that.
Republicans are the deadbeats. They should pay for healthcare instead of sticking employers with their resposibilities.
Hire illegals and fire these lame workers demanding healthcare they wont pay for.
Find anyone that believes that you actually get better health care in countries that have a "Public Option".
Don't use the red herring about life expect etc. Americans lifestyles are the least healthy in the world and we still have comprable life expects. If you pull that out you will not find anyone flying to Canada or the UK to have a heart transplant, or brain tumor removed. Let us buy insurance across state lines and you reduce costs immediately!
jlb101,
You pay for someone's medical bills each time a medicare contribution is deducted from your paycheck. Do you rationally object to that?
I am a frequent visitor to las Vegas and now make every attempt to stay at hotels that are non union. I also tip less at all union restaurants and more at all non-union restaurants. The Seiu are killing this country with their lunatic left wing proposals
I guess the 50 morons outside the building are part of the uneducated, unemployed dumbacrats looking for handouts.
Their signs should read "Will protest for free handouts for life"
lvice--are you kidding?? There have been plenty of stories of Americans going to third world countries for cheaper surgury, like this 60 minutes report:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/2...
.shtml
Some say...
Taxpayers are the deadbeats. They should pay for health care for everyone who does not have the moral responsibility of paying for it themselves. Free is good...
Hire illegals and fire these lame workers who do not want to pay for health insurance for others who could afford it, but decide to let others take care of their moral responsibilities.
I can look at Dick Collins and see why he wants free stuff from the government. He looks like a total and complete loser.
It's all leftwing propaganda that the American healthcare system is broken, despite what the quack doctor Kinsora said in the news article.
The system is fine, it's operating within the free enterprise system in place today. That's the way it should operate, without governmental emcumbrances. It's called Capitalism, which works great in America, folks!