Health Care: Blue Dog Mike Ross Says Congress Wants To Hear From Constituents
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MIKE ROSS: …You know, we have been trying to get healthcare reform done since Harry Truman, and our objective is to get healthcare reform done this year; that was the President’s original objective. And somewhere along the way, people started imposing this artificial deadline of get it done by August 1. We’ve done a lot this year. The American people are ready for us to slow down and to actually take the time to think about what we are voting on, to read what we are voting on, and by waiting until September, this gives every member of Congress, Democrat and Republican, the opportunity to go home and listen to their constituents, to make sure that we’re getting this right.
The American people are ready for you to slow down, cut the knees out from under the public option and water down the health care reform bill? Really?!?
Let’s take a look at a lot of America’s reality:
The grassy parking lot is full. Beyond the fence, the cars are stacked up for miles. A snake of headlights is visible in the semi-dark along the curvy length of Hurricane Road, waiting to access the Wise County Fairgrounds.
These are the modern-day breadlines: people desperate not for food, but for health care.
“We are working taxpaying jobs, paying taxes, and we can’t get insurance because we make $6.55 an hour,” said Laura Head, 32, of Rogersville, Tenn., the first person in line Friday for the first day of the Remote Area Medical clinic, an annual three-day event offering free medical care. “This is really a great beneficial thing, but it doesn’t have to be this way; we could all have insurance.”
A single mother of three who mows yards and moves trailers for a living, Head said she arrived at the fairgrounds Tuesday, to camp out at the fairgrounds until the health fair began Friday morning. Her motivation was simple: severe, constant pain.
Close to two years ago, her boyfriend smashed her teeth, she said – but, without the $6,000 needed to have the teeth pulled she has endured infection after infection, making literally 100 visits to the emergency room for antibiotics and pain medication.
At $6.55 an hour, Laura Head can’t afford to buy a lobbyist to stroll the halls of Congress, ply the media with tasty morsels and hang out in Max Baucus’s offices, now can she?
If Mike Ross and the Blue Dogs want to use the August recess to hear from constituents, what say we give them — all of them — an earful?
Jeebus, Mike Ross’s “I know what’s best for you” sanctimony just pissed me off royally. Especially when it isn’t about the little guy at all.