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After listening to President Barack Obama speak Monday [March 8], Pat Stanton still didn’t have the answers he wanted about health care reform.
“Who’s going to pay? He didn’t answer that question,” he said after the president left Arcadia University’s Kuch Center.
The small-businessman in Jenkintown spends a lot of money on health care and just saw a 24 percent increase on his premiums, he said.
For Stanton, high costs are the crux of the problem. His mother was recently in the hospital and incurred a $20,000 bill for three days, he said.
While he supports reforming the system —“Everyone in this building’s for reform,” he said — he was concerned how the government will pay for the legislation.
He was also concerned that tax dollars would fund abortions under the bill.
“[That] our citizens will now be forced to pay for abortion is unconstitutional,” he said.
While President Obama’s speech brought in its fair share of supporters, those skeptical of and opposed to the plan, from event ticket-holders to Tea Partiers, were also present Monday.
During Obama’s remarks, Jack O’Brien shouted a question asking how the government would pay for the bill, but the president continued speaking.
“The government can’t supply us with health care. They can’t afford it,” the Coatesville resident said after the speech. “We have a trillion-and-a-half dollar a year deficit. They raised the debt ceiling $1.8 trillion in December. This is going to cost another trillion dollars.”
Earlier in the day, at about 9 a.m., at least 30 people with signs reading “Obamacare — vote no!” and “Free health care is not free” rallied on the Easton Road border of campus.
Russ Murphy, founder and chairman of the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, traveled to Philadelphia to show his opposition to the president’s health care reform bill, legislation he fears will incur costs that could drive some doctors out of business and hike the price of Medicare, he said.
“They ought to just take the whole thing, tear it up and start over again,” he said, adding the bill would also give the government more control over the people.
“There’s over 2,700 pages and to go through the list of all the things that are in there that are hidden, and most of these people are aware of, you might just as well take the whole thing, trash it, start over, write it so people can understand it,” he said.
Kurt Gasper of Southampton also called for legislators to tear up the bill.“We got a good turnout here and just want everyone to know, we got to stop Obama and his health care takeover — his socialism,” he said.
If the bill is passed, it will significantly change more than health care, said Joseph Panas, a member of the Valley Forge Patriots.
“I suspect that he may be willing to be a one-term president to try to ram this through,” he said. “So in my own small way, I’m just out here trying to send a message and say, ‘Please don’t do this, it’s ruining the country.’”
