Congressman Burton addresses health-care reform at Peru meeting

Posted: Thursday, September 3, 2009 12:00 am

Peter Adelsen Staff Writer padelsen@kokomoperspective.com | 0 comments

Hundreds turned out to share their health-care reform concerns to Congressman Dan Burton, R-5th District on Thursday at the Peru High School auditorium.

The majority of the crowd agreed with Burton's stance on health-care reform. Burton long has opposed government control of health care. Instead, he said he is in favor of medical tort reform, and the majority of the crowd applauded him for that. He said that doctors cost about 25 percent of the total health-care cost.

Burton agrees with most of the members in Congress that the health-care system needs to make positive changes to enhance consumer protections and help the uninsured obtain affordable health-care coverage.

Burton's plan is the Empowering Patients First Act (H.R. 3400), which would not increase taxes or increase government spending. Instead it would use the money the government receives more effectively, he said.

The Burton plan would:

• Protect the doctor-patient relationship

• Lower health-care costs

• Expand access to quality care and coverage

• Invest in prevention and wellness programs

David Tharp of Kokomo said he does not agree with Burton's health-care plan. He, instead, is in favor of the Democrats' plan.

"I support any comprehensive health-care reform that comes out of Washington [and] includes a public health insurance option," he said. "It's the only way we can have a truly affordable plan that injects competition in the market, keeps health insurance completely honest, and provides you a plan that you can take with you from job to job or to be able to use and enroll in so you aren't locked into your current employers based on the benefits that they provide.

"The public option is the cornerstone of reform efforts to help lower cost and inject competition and give people the choice, and it works for folks who are uninsured peoples.

"The people over the age of 65 already have, in effect, the public option with Medicare, and what the public option does is allow each person to purchase a type of public insurance the same as the people over 65 have. If we really want to get health insurance costs under control, we've got to have a method where people can buy public insurance and the public health insurance grants that."

However, the presiding idea at the town hall was that the Democrat health-care plan is not a good idea.

"I think people are going to get rationed on health care," said Dave Benzinger of Wabash. "I don't know why the American people can't learn from history. Look at Canada, look at the U.K. I have a daughter-in-law who has relatives that live in Ireland. They are asking her, 'What are you Americans thinking by going with this plan?' That ought to tell people a lot right there. Why not look at the people that have it and see what we are going to get? Anyone who has their head out of the sand ought to see it."

Outside the town hall was Linda Pugh, of Cass County, holding a sign in favor of government health care.

"Where I am coming from is a Christian perspective in that Jesus taught us to love one another and care for one another," Pugh said. "He gave several parables, one of which is the 'Good Samaritan.' I think that the people who are against health-care reform are the people passing by the injured at the side of the road, and I think that we need to go back and remember our Sunday School lessons and Bible school lessons and to recall that we are instructed to go and do likewise as the Good Samaritan. Another thing that Jesus taught in another parable was that he said when you do this to the least of these my brethren you do it to me, meaning people who are without, and if you don't help people who are without then you are not helping Jesus."

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