Tuesday, March 16, 2010

"Oh my gosh, I'm calling the president a liar."

Obama has recently been barnstorming around the country talking up his health care plan. But not everyone in his audiences is applauding.
Ingrid Martin has been unemployed for almost six months. Her last job was with HealthSmart, a privately held health care benefit management organization. She has health insurance through her husband who is a nurse at the Cleveland Clinic.
"When national health care became a real threat over the summertime, I was laid off," she said in an exclusive interview with Politics Daily. "They went from six sales reps down to two, east of the Mississippi, and I happened to be one of the last ones. And the big problem now is after 24 years of being in this industry, I've sent out resume after resume, and nobody is hiring right now. I think they're all terrified of what Obamacare's going to do."
Martin said she opposes Obama's health care plan for philosophical, not parochial reasons, and after his speech, she caught the president's attention.
"I didn't clap and I didn't smile, and I just sort of held firm to my beliefs and held my tongue so I didn't get into any trouble," she recalled. "And I think that, being in the front row, he noticed that because when he came down off the stairs and started shaking hands, when he got to me, he said, 'Thanks for coming,' and he looked at me and said, 'Are you okay?' And I said, 'Yes sir, I just don't support your bill'."
Ingrid Martin said she then entered into about a 2-minute-long debate reminiscent of Obama's meeting with another Ohioan, Joe Wurzelbacher (a.k.a. "Joe the Plumber"), telling him she worries about the long-term implications of his sweeping legislation. She told the president he was focused on insurance reform, as opposed to the rising cost of health care, which she believes to be the fundamental problem. Martin stressed her view of the need for tort reform. She also noted: "He said things like, 'Medicare is not going to be affected by this bill,' which is not right."
When Obama said that his bill addressed her concerns, "I just kind of shook my head and said, 'I don't believe it does' -- oh my gosh, I'm calling the president a liar," she added with a nervous laugh.
The president and his allies have spent the past year demonizing and threatening insurance companies, which provide millions of Americans with jobs.
According to the Politics Daily article, Martin was only able to attend the rally because she has a friend on the president's police detail. She said she was probably the only person there who wasn't gung-ho about ObamaCare. The president is most likely screening attendees of his speeches to make sure they agree with him, a practice that progressives roundly criticized when George W. Bush did it during his presidency.
It's not just health insurance workers who could lose their jobs if ObamaCare becomes law. According to a recent survey of doctors by the New England Journal of Medicine, 29% of physicians will quit if health insurance reform goes through. If a public option is passed, as many Democrats want farther down the road, the number jumps to 46%.

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