Dozens rally at Monument Terrace for health care reform

“Health care can’t wait!”

“I’m ready for health care reform.”

“We can’t afford to wait.”

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Dozens gathered at Monument Terrace on Wednesday evening with handheld signs proudly displaying their convictions about what they called a much-need health care overhaul.

Attendees took turns at a microphone, sharing personal stories, reading accounts of struggles due to a privatized health care system and decrying the opposition’s attempts to raise concern about proposed changes to the national system.

Don Manning, a volunteer with the political action group MoveOn.org, said he organized the event because of the contentious debate across the county due to President Barack Obama’s proposed changes to the current health care system.

“There’s really no substitute for a real health insurance plan,” Manning said.

“It’s a matter of, really, I think, spending time to just sit down and think about it.”

Manning said he didn’t think the issue should be as hotly contested as it has been of late, calling the issue a “no-brainer.”

“You can take out a clean sheet of paper and a pencil and figure it out. You don’t need to go to the newspapers or the books or anything,” he said.

Edwin Hill agreed.

Hill, 59, a security technician employed by Westminster-Canterbury retirement home, said an advanced case of degenerative arthritis has kept him from work for over a year.

“Doing my appointed duties, I used to have to walk about 12 miles a day around the complex,” Hill said.

“It got to the point where I couldn’t walk anymore. I’d walk for a few feet, then I’d start getting really bad pain in my legs and in my back.”

Hill said his insurance payments total about $1,000 per month, and he’s afraid of having to pay that when his disability insurance runs out.

“When that does, I’ll be up a creek,” he said, adding “I think, definitely a public option is probably the best way to go.”

For Anne Scott Cardwell, the issue wasn’t only about her own coverage.

“I’m a small business owner, and to imagine (being) able to ensure my employees is a fantasy,” she said. “It’s an impossibility.”

Cardwell said she’s repulsed by a private health care system that “makes money by denying its services,” especially because health care benefits are so necessary.

“I think it’s both vulgar and immoral that people lose their jobs, lose their lives, lose their homes because they got sick,” she said, adding that she believes even those who can afford health care would benefit from an overhauled system.

“The amount of money that we spend for the amount of services we receive is inefficient at best,” Cardwell said.

She added that the moral and ideological opposition to the proposal from across the aisle doesn’t make sense to her.

“I just don’t understand an ideology that 47 million Americans should risk losing their homes and their lives because they can’t afford to get sick.”

Larry Symonds, 71, who also attended the vigil, agreed.

“What ideological grounds do they have, other than that there’s a political advantage to them to do it,” he asked.

“There’s no advantage to this country, to oppose it.”

Symonds said he was concerned that the most vocal opposition was coming from those who simply wanted to embarrass Obama, and to get a conservative majority in power.

Cardwell said the issue is so important that she hopes lawmakers enact the reforms, even if much of America opposes them.

“I hope that congress (passes the reforms), even if it’s initially unpopular,” she said, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Do what you know is right for the American people. That’s what you were elected for,” she added.