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Area religious leaders rally for health care reform

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By Dave Larsen, Staff Writer 5:39 PM Saturday, November 21, 2009

HUBER HEIGHTS — As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote tonight, Nov. 21, to bring the health care bill to the floor for debate, Dayton-area religious leaders attempted to rally local support for health care reform.

Greater Dayton Faith Leaders for Health Care Reform held a forum Saturday at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Huber Heights.

“We’re calling on our congressional delegation to act on health care reform,” said the Rev. Darryl Fairchild of the United Method Church, who moderated the forum.

About 50 people attended the event, including area labor leaders and concerned community members.

“In 2008, 60,300 people in Montgomery County had no health care, with 8,000 being children,” said Wesley Wells, executive director of the Dayton-Miami Valley AFL-CIO.

One man at the forum said he filed for bankruptcy and is now facing foreclosure because of the cost of his son’s medical bills from an accident.

Dr. Donald Nguyen, a pediatric urologist at Children’s Medical Center of Dayton, described a young patient whose severe kidney condition was made significantly worse because her family couldn’t afford health insurance.

“This is a crisis,” Nguyen said. “We need health care reform and we need a robust public plan.”

Religious leaders are taking a stand because health care is “an issue of compassion and justice,” said the Rev. Perry Henderson of Corinthian Baptist Church.

Insurance companies are concerned about profits, not people’s health, Henderson said. “That’s business, but we have to look at it from a spiritual point of view,” he said.

People are conflicted about health care reform because of the contentious political debate over the issue, said the Rev. Rod Kennedy of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dayton.

“It’s time for our country to come back together and realize the bottom line is not the determining factor in the care for people on the bottom,” Kennedy said.

Petitions were distributed with the goal of collecting 5,000 signatures by Dec. 8, when religious leaders from across the nation will speak out at rallies for health care reform.

Fairchild hopes to get “more people of faith to sign on and to come forward to our congressional delegation and have a broader showing of what the middle of the community is saying,” he said.

Historic health care bill nears key Senate vote

In a show of unity, Senate Democrats sealed a 60-vote majority needed to advance health care legislation Saturday ahead of an evening showdown with Republicans eager to doom the bill and inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.

Two final holdouts, Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced in speeches a few hours apart on the Senate floor they would vote to clear the way for what is expected to be a bruising, full-scale health care debate after Thanksgiving.

At a 10-year cost approaching $1 trillion, the measure is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny benefits, and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally.

“It is clear to me that doing nothing is not an option,” said Landrieu, who noted the legislation includes $100 million to help her state pay the costs of health care for the poor.

Lincoln, who faces a tough re-election next year, said the evening vote will “mark the beginning of consideration of this bill by the U.S. Senate, not the end.”

Both stressed they were not committing in advance to vote for the bill that ultimately emerges from next month’s debate. Even so, their announcements marked a major victory for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the White House in a year-end drive to enact the most sweeping changes to the nation’s health care system in a half-century or more.

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance, and large firms would incur large costs if they did not provide it to their workforce.

Congressional budget analysts put the legislation’s cost at $979 billion over a decade and said it would reduce deficits over the same period while extending coverage to 94 percent of the eligible population.

The House approved its version of the bill earlier this month on a near party line vote of 220-215.

In hours of debate before the Saturday evening vote, Republicans attacked the legislation as a government takeover of health care and worse.

“Move over, Bernie Madoff. Tip your hat to a trillion-dollar scam,” said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., likening the bill’s supporters to the imprisoned investor who fleeced millions.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said Reid had delayed implementation of many of the bill’s key provisions and made it look less costly as a result. He put the true price tag at $2.5 trillion over a decade once implemented.

“Senators who support this bill have a lot of explaining to do,” said the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “Americans know that a vote to proceed on this bill is a vote for higher premiums, higher taxes and massive cuts to Medicare. That’s a pretty hard thing to justify supporting.”

That was a rebuttal to Landrieu and other Democrats who described the evening vote as one of procedure instead of substance.

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I think our government is trying to form a new generation.If you are over 55 watchout, you are part of the old generation.And speaking of governments,I'm tired of paying for government workers health care while I lost mine and will have to pay big bucks to obtain additional...it will be the difference between medicine and food, so county and city workers...your turn.Can you imagine the illegal act of selling prescription drugs?Oh well, meds for prisoners are provided...by tax paying citizens.

Sunny
2:14 PM, 11/22/2009

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@joe: do you want to meet up tomorrow at the abortion clinic after your klan meeting?

redstater
12:04 AM, 11/22/2009

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redstater
You need mercy on your soul, you don't understand the public option do you? Its a tax increase on everyone. Remember if you don't pay your taxes you can go to jail, Nancy the Idiot Pelosi has even said this in a interview that it could happen. I'm am sick and tired of you idiots thinking the government is the way out of this mess, they aren't they cause most of these problems. Just like killing jobs, you have to lower taxes to create jobs not increase them.

Joe
11:53 PM, 11/21/2009

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Rocky i don't have glasses on you do. Most hard working people do have health insurance. That's why they work hard, and if you don't you still have the best care in the world and lets fix the problem not take full control over it. Most people i know who don't have it is because they don't want it...so now you want to force these people to have it. That's stupid go find another country to live in then. I have no problem helping people down on their luck, but not just down right lazy people.

Joe
11:46 PM, 11/21/2009

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@Joe (that means, this is directed at Joe): what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

redstater
11:44 PM, 11/21/2009

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