Republicans hear critics of health-care bill

By Gary Lookadoo

Posted: July 29, 2009 at 8:16 a.m.

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BENTONVILLE — Benton County Republican Committee members heard two speakers hit a federal health-care proposal they said would take too many health-care choices away from most Americans.

Guest speaker Teresa Oelke said Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, and other federal lawmakers, need to hear Arkansans' strong opposition to health care in its current form.

Oelke is a member of Americans for Prosperity, a grassroots foundation that engages citizens in the name of limited government and free markets.

Even a U.N. study critical of U.S. health care acknowledged the U.S. system is No. 1 in patient care, and in the whole world, some 40 percent of all people traveling for health reasons are coming to the U.S. for treatment, she said.

The U.N. study criticized U.S. health care for its relative inequality, but the system being proposed will provide less access to quality health care, Oelke said.

She cited a national poll that found 51percent of Americans "strongly oppose" national care; and some 86 percent of Arkansans in another poll described themselves as either satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their current health care, she said.

Another speaker, Jacqueline Hobb, talked about bad experiences she and her family had with nationalized health care during her nearly three years in Great Britain.

She was also angered when a medical professional suggested that her 81-year-old father-in-law, who had just suffered a heart attack, "had lived his life" and should give up his hospital bed to make room for a younger patient.

"Who are they to decide that?" she asked.

She considers Americans, especially older Americans, at serious risk of having problems similar to her family's in the event current health-care reform measures are adopted, she said.

Hobb said she had gone from uninterested doctor to uninterested doctor, and it was six to 12 weeks before she saw a specialist for a medical problem she personally had.

She was lucky that the last doctor she saw performed impromptu outpatient surgery on her, likely saving her life, she said.

News, Pages 11 on 07/29/2009

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