Huntington town hall participants divided over health overhaul
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Cong. Rahall will hold similar town meetings in Glen Jean, Lewisburg and Mullens. |
August 31, 2009 ·
Members of the Huntington community had their first chance to voice concerns over health care reform at a meeting held by Rep. Nick Rahall Monday afternoon.
More than 200 people showed up at the Joan C. Edwards playhouse at Marshall University for the meeting. The crowd appeared to be split down the middle.
One person in favor of overhauling the health care system was Yvonne Jones of Huntington. She helps run Ebenezer Medical Outreach, a center for those who can’t afford treatment.
She says not passing a health reform bill would be a mistake for the patients at the Ebenezer.
“We see them everyday in the clinic, a train wreck is what my staff calls them because they are so deathly ill and if we don’t do something about healthcare in this country now, it frightens me to think of what’s going to happen,” Jones said.
Lawrence Pauley of Huntington says the real problem is health care is just too expensive. He wants Rahall and others to work on fixing that.
“Health care is expensive and some people cannot afford to pay for it directly or pay for insurance, and seems to me that’s where Congress ought to be directing its efforts, to solve that problem,” Pauley said.
This was Rahall’s second town hall meeting on health care. Rahall says he can understand frustrations from the public and realizes things need to be fixed.
“I can understand a lot of where there fear is coming from, I can understand a lot of their frustrations with government after all we’ve been through as a nation and are still going through. I get it,” Rahall said.
Rahall says something has to be done.
“We pay more for health care than we do educating our children, than we do building our roads and than we do eating and providing food,” Rahall said.
Rahall disagrees with critics who say that the government should stay out of health care.
“Rather it’s in the health care sector where there should be competition provided to bring down the rates and help cover those that are uninsured or underinsured.”
The meeting won’t be the only opportunity this week for people in southern West Virginia to speak for Rahall. He’s also holding meetings today in Glen Jean, Wednesday in Lewisburg and Thursday in Mullens.