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12-30-2008, 06:40 AM
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In Remembrance
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Obama Team Engages Public on Health Care
Daschle Visits Indiana for Grass-Roots Forum By Ceci Connolly Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 30, 2008; A03 DUBLIN, Ind., Dec. 29 -- Dolly Sweet, 77, has battled cancer more than once. She's a fighter. But when her doctor recently prescribed a medication that cost $35,000 a year, she felt she had no choice. "I canceled the medicine," she said matter-of-factly to former senator Thomas A. Daschle, President-elect Barack Obama's top health adviser, who had come to the fire station here on a quest for "fresh ideas" on improving U.S. medical care. "I wonder if you could talk to the drug companies," Sweet asked Daschle. "That's more than my Social Security." Daschle, seated on a metal folding chair with pen in hand and videographer in tow, symbolically kicked off the incoming administration's effort to revamp health care with a grass-roots event that not-so-coincidentally mimicked the types of gatherings that Obama drew on to build support for his presidential candidacy. "It's stories like that that can make a huge difference as we try to persuade members of Congress and others about the importance of trying to make the system better," Daschle told Sweet. Even before taking office or introducing concrete policy proposals, the administration-in-waiting is moving to build public support around the broad notion that the U.S. health system needs an overhaul. To Washington veterans, the approach may seem backward, or even naive, but Obama is betting that the energetic, technology-savvy supporters who fueled his candidacy will act as a potent counterbalance to the traditionally powerful special interests that have defeated similar reform efforts. Daschle told the 35 people at the open meeting in Dublin -- one of 8,500 that will be held nationwide -- that it was "designed really to engage the public, to get out of Washington and hear directly from you about your concerns, about your recommendations, about ways you think our system can be made to work better." Aides said Daschle plans to attend another health-care forum today, at the Congress Heights Senior Wellness Center in Southeast Washington. Travis Ulerick, an emergency medical technician in this town of 700, organized the session out of what he called frustration over the hardships he sees every day on the job. His ambulance recently picked up a woman who, after suffering a seizure, begged to be let out of the vehicle because she could not afford the $300 fee for transportation to the hospital. "We have one of the best health-care systems in the world if you have money," said Ulerick, 25. "It's one of the worst if you're poor." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...src=newsletter
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with much love, lou_lou . . by . , on Flickr pd documentary - part 2 and 3 . . Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in your life you will have been all of these. |
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| "Thanks for this!" says: | bandido1 (12-31-2008) |
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Obama Team Engages Public on Health Care
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