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Sen. Brown supports Obama health care reform plan
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4:26 PM Wednesday, July 22, 2009
By Tiffany Y. Latta
Staff Writer
CLEVELAND — A day before President Obama holds a town hall meeting in Cleveland to push health care reform, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) joined with a grassroots group in support of the president’s agenda.
Brown along with Organizing for America, a grassroots project of the Democratic National Committee, said in a conference call today, July 22, that health care reform is needed this year.
“I don’t think we can afford to wait any longer,” Brown said. “We’ve got to do what we need to do and do it the right away and I think we can.’’
Obama wants to overhaul the health care system to control costs and ensure health insurance for the more than 40 million Americans who lack coverage.
Obama faces opposition from both Republicans and Democrats concerned about tax increases and the estimated $1 trillion price tag.
Brown and the grassroots group said the key principals of Obama’s plan include reducing costs, providing choice of doctors, hospitals and health plans, and assuring affordable quality health care for Americans.
Speaking with Brown and Organizing for America officials were Ohio small business owners and nurses.
One of the nurses who spoke during the conference call said in the last five years, medical staff have seen people return to hospitals more quickly because they cannot afford prescriptions.
“(Patients) can’t afford the medications we fix them. We get them on a medication regiment, they get home, they don’t have the means to provide for their medication — it’s food and their rent, or their medication. And what, in turn, happens to them is they end up back in the hospital very quickly...,” said Christina Barker, Community Health Partners Regional Medical Center in Lorain.
Elizabeth Lessner, a small business owner from Columbus, said insurance costs for her employees have increased 40 percent.
“That’s something that in these economic times I can’t afford. I have to make some tough choices.”
Brown said Americans can’t afford to wait any longer for a health care overhaul.
He said 14,000 people lose health insurance coverage daily and costs are sinking businesses.
“If we do nothing it will be a terrible mistake,” Brown said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2180 or tlatta@coxohio.com.
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Absolutely astounding! I mean disgusting.
We do need health care reform and it is needed now! These characters trying to carpet bomb reality with pants on fire lies are not helping anyone.
I support this Senator Brown's efforts and look forward to more of the same.
2:03 PM, 8/13/2009
8:25 AM, 8/6/2009
7:07 AM, 8/4/2009
we are all going to take a better look at who we vote for next time but now it is to late .where do we go from here lose are health care then cap& trade going to the poor house fast with this white house every one though Bush was bad
love to have him back
10:36 PM, 8/2/2009
you are wasting your energy typing a response to "savanation". He is so deep into the kool-aid vat he has nearly drowned in it. He never lets facts get in the wsy of his spewing of the lefty line of "thinking" (I use that term loosely). All you will get are grade-school level insults hurled at you, because that is the only way the lefties know how to respond when the facts are presented to them and they are (again & again) proven wrong.
10:12 AM, 7/24/2009