Stay Healthy

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama did not come to Portsmouth Tuesday to dictate how he thought the health care system should be changed, but rather to listen to opinions. Asking more questions than his audience, the Illinois Democrat and presidential hopeful heard dozens of stories from Seacoast voters on how the current employer-based system has failed them. The 100 people in attendance, ranging from divorced moms to health care providers, also offered suggestions on how to improve the system.

With a giant newspaper press as a backdrop, Obama emphasized he was not there to offer a solution to the health care crisis, but to hear what voters thought should be done. “It is not my job to come in with a predisposed agenda,” Obama said. The two-hour event was billed as a Town Hall-style health care forum and held at the Seacoast Media Group’s new building at Pease International Tradeport.

Although one woman questioned why they should think anything is going to change, the young senator said he believed there would be universal health care by the end of his first term. Obama asked questions of the audience, seeking to learn what they liked about their health care plan and what would hold them back from moving away from an employer-based health care system.

“I think health care should be available to everyone for their lifetime,” Nancy Hotchkiss of Portsmouth said before Obama spoke. “I don’t think employers can always provide it,” she added. Many people told personal stories about the unaffordability of health care.

Andrea Ardito, a mother of three, said it proved cheaper to pay expenses out-of-pocket when she gave birth to her third child two years ago than paying for health insurance. Since her husband is self-employed and she is not currently working, the cost of health insurance was prohibitively expensive. They now pay for catastrophic insurance with a $10,000 deductible.

Ardito said she works hard to take care of herself because she “cannot afford to get sick.” Obama did more listening than talking, saying his plan for instituting national health care would be one that came from the voters. He plans to take what he heard in Portsmouth, and other communities in the country, and post it on his website. People will be able to respond and make suggestions from which he will formulate his health care plan. Even then, he said he would have it available for review “to ensure that this time we get it done,” he said.

Portsmouth resident Laurie McCray said she did not want more competition or more plans. “I don’t have time to compare when my family has a health issue,” McCray said. “Health care is not a market. It is not an industry.” McCray, like many others in the room, supports a single-payer health plan with no deductibles or co-pays. Any transition into universal health care is going to cost money, Obama said. “I feel the government has a responsibility. If they can find $80 million like that to kill people, they ought to be able to find some money to let people live,” Arthur Hillson said.

Obama said although the United States spends at least two times the average other countries spend on health care, a good percentage of that money is wasted. Applying medical technology to reduce paperwork and bureaucracy will help save money that can be used to fund universal health care, he said. Leslie Brenner expressed frustration that 16 years ago she sat in a similar venue talking with another presidential candidate about health care reform.

“You don’t need to hear more about people’s individual problems. I think it comes down to: ‘Does our country have values about having equity?’” she said. What has kept things from changing is a lack of “political will,” Obama said. “My goal is to convince everybody that change can happen. When millions of voices from ordinary people make a decision that change is going to happen, it does,” he said.