At Denver clinic, it’s Pelosi vs. health plan foes
By Charles Ashby 
| August 7, 2009 | 5:01 AM
Demonstrators gather before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrives at the Stout Street Clinic in Denver on Thursday. (UPI photo by Gary C. Caskey)
The people inside said that the people outside are afraid of the facts. The people outside said that the people inside don’t understand what’s really going on and what it will mean in the long run. What are they talking about? Health care reform, of course, and there’s no shortage of opinions on the subject.
With U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touring a homeless center’s health clinic in Denver and with a major health care measure on the table back in Congress, opponents of that plan couldn’t resist the chance to let the California lawmaker know where they stand.
Carrying placards and shouting slogans on the corner of Stout and Broadway in front of the Downtown Denver clinic, some said that neither Pelosi nor lawmakers in Washington have any real understanding of what’s actually in the 1,018-page America’s Affordable Health Choices Act being debated in Congress. Although many of them admitted they didn’t either, they questioned the wisdom of passing it.
“I don’t know every detail because I haven’t read the bill, but I listen to news on both sides, and . . .” started Jack Huffman, a Loveland retiree who was sporting a sign calling on Pelosi not to go forward with the bill.
“We also have LibertyCounsel.org,” interrupted his wife, Carol. “The lawyers of that organization have gone into that bill, and what’s in it is frightening to us.”
According to its Web site, Liberty Counsel is a Florida-based nonprofit litigation, education and policy group whose goal is to advance “religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family.”
The organization’s report, based on an overview it received of the bill, is a list of bullet points alleging that the bill will ration health care, create a committee that decides what treatment individuals can get, provide health care to noncitizens, issue national identification cards, and give the federal government access to private bank accounts. It also says the bill is a payoff for unions and such organizations as ACORN, the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Scare tactics, Pelosi said, and people need to stop paying attention to them.
The speaker toured the Stout Street Clinic operated by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless with Democratic U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis of Colorado. Afterward, she said people are afraid of learning about what the bill really does. Once they discover what it doesn’t do, she said, they’ll learn to like it.
“Don’t be afraid of facts because what is in this legislation is very, very positive,” Pelosi told local media in the clinic’s packed lobby. “No longer will families be tied to their health insurance because they have a pre-existing condition. No longer will you not have health insurance because you’ve lost your job, because you changed jobs or because you wanted to start a business and be self-employed.
“Under this legislation, premiums will be capped, but your benefits will not,” she added. “No annual or lifetime benefits will be capped. The list goes on and on.”
But it’s not just the coverage some opponents are contesting. It’s the cost to the nation. How, they ask, can the federal government afford it? How big will the federal debt grow as a result? What will be left of the health care insurance market if they have to go back to it?
Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, said it won’t take long before the nation gets answers to those questions, but he fears by then it will be too late.
“(Pelosi) and her colleagues, along with President (Barack) Obama, are promoting what we consider to be a failed health care reform plan,” Wadhams said. “The American people, as they take a closer look at this health care plan, they realize it raises taxes on small businesses and the middle class, it does cut Medicare, it increases the debt, and it will have a public option that will destroy private health insurance.
“There is no doubt that the public option is a back-door way of getting a fully government-controlled, essentially a single-payer (plan),” he said. “The proposals as debated in Congress are all terribly expensive. They will add to the debt. Democrats themselves have been bucking the cost.”
According to a report released by the Congressional Budget Office last month, the bill will cost the nation about $1 trillion over 10 years. But CoPIRG, a liberal advocacy group, says that while that may be true, the bill ultimately will save the nation $3 trillion – and Colorado, $39 billion — in part because it will help reduce private health care premiums. Though asked by some members of Congress to do so, the CBO won’t estimate costs beyond 10 years.
Wadhams pooh-poohed CoPIRG’s estimates, saying the group is just trying to help Democrats sell the measure.
“CoPIRG definitely does have a point of view,” he said. “It’s a very liberal point of view, and there’s no doubt that they would do everything they can to shed a good light on this faulty proposal.”
Pelosi, DeGette and Polis said the cost estimates aren’t taking everything into account. What isn’t calculated, among other things, is the economic benefit that will occur as a result of a national workforce that doesn’t make employment and financial decisions based on what kind of health care they have.
Pelosi said it would lower medical costs, improve health care quality, expand coverage and still allow people to remain with the coverage they already have. She also said it would help businesses be more competitive because many won’t have to worry about — and pay for — supplying health care to their employees.
Still, folks like Jack and Carol Huffman, who are in their upper 60s, are fuming over the bill. Both fear it will erode the Medicare and supplemental coverage they already have, leaving them with few options when their health takes a turn for the worse as they get older.
“If I have some sort of illness that requires lots of medical care and my hope of surviving is in question, I’m going to be told to go home and how to deal with how to die,” Carol Huffman said. “Why are they rushing to get this through?”
“Because they know they only have little time while they’re in power,” her husband interrupted.
Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, health care reform, nancy pelosi
