Anti Socialized Medicine rally in Denver, Colorado
At a time when the Obama administration and Congress are contemplating the passage of health care legislation, a group of local activists gathered at the State Capitol in Denver, Colorado, to protest the idea of what they consider to be socialized medicine. The event took place on 07/28/2009. President Obama has admitted he has not read the bill he is trying to get Congress to pass. Conversely, when health care reform was being contemplated in the Clinton White House, the White House helped frame and write the legislation which never made it to a vote on either side of Congress.
The protesters are concerned that if health care reform passes then American will have an identical health care system to Canada and Britain. While it is the professed goal of the Obama administration to reduce costs, the Congressional Budget Office has recently said that the cost savings of 2 billion dollars will not be realized until 2019. Oddly enough, the health care legislation is more than 2 billion dollars.
Senator Demint said “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Various news reports have reported Senator Grassley telling an anecdote about an unnamed Democrat in the House of Representatives advising the President that if some changes are not made, then the bill will not pass. President Obama is alleged to have replied “You’re going to destroy my presidency.” If this anecdote is true, then this may be one of the only times that President Obama agrees with a conservative member of Congress.
The protesters are not thrilled with the fact that it is a 1000 plus page bill that not many members of Congress have bothered to read. Oddly enough, anyone familiar with the legal profession would advise you to read something before you sign it. And Obama is marketing a plan he has not read and would probably sign it if it passed. At a time when Obama is trying to influence the debate to his advantage, he is also learning the hard lesson that dreamy rhetoric and governing are not always the same thing.
Socialized medicine = government employs doctors, owns hospitals, provides healthcare directly. Think UK NHS or our VA. Nothing in any of the proposals involves this. This is a matter of fact, not opinion.
There is no particular “bill he is trying to get Congress to pass” as yet. There are a variety of proposals and legislators are still hashing out the particulars. And by the way, “anyone familiar with the legal profession” will tell you that it doesn’t take very long to read a 1000-page bill when the thing is double-spaced, footnoted, written in gigantic type and has margins that take up half the page.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.pdf
Of course you’d know that had you bothered to look at the thing yourself before complaining that others won’t.
More of these need to pop up around the country. If the middle class want to be heard, they need to turn a little activist.