NORTON, Va. – A demonstration planned outside Mountain View Regional Medical Center in support of federal health care reform didn’t happen Tuesday – but the counter-protest did.
A few members of the Abingdon-based Tenth Amendment Foundation stood with signs in the freezing rain outside the medical center Tuesday afternoon, showcasing their opposition to the proposed legislation. They said they organized the protest after hearing that supporters of the health-care bill would be there.
Between 25 and 30 people showed up, the demonstrators said, but some went home after realizing the protest they came to counter hadn’t materialized.
Prior to the hospital protest, the Tenth Amendment group visited Democratic U.S. Sen. Jim Webb’s office, hand-delivering letters expressing their views and then standing in the weather with their signs downtown.
Tim Mullins, the Wise County blogger who organized the original hospital protest through MoveOn.org, said Tuesday in a phone interview that he’d stood for about 20 minutes on Park Avenue, where a road leads up to the hospital, but when no one else showed up, he went home.
Mullins’ protest was billed as a “Cost of Delay Vigil,” pushing for speedy passage of the legislation. He said the cost of delaying is the 125 Americans he said die each day due to failures of a broken health care system.
He said Tuesday’s effort was one of 800 such demonstrations around the nation, though he didn’t know Tuesday how the others had fared.
“I’m going to have to write in that I don’t have a picture or anything but I was there,” Mullins said. “And I did say a prayer for the 45,000 people who die every year because of rationed health care and the way that the system works.”
Strother Smith, who organized the counter-protest, said his group’s response to the “Cost of Delay” event was to highlight the “Cost to Freedom” of proceeding with a massive, hasty package of reforms.
Smith said the proposals would force all Americans to depend on government for their health care – thus undermining their freedom with a vast expansion of central government power.
“I feel like the government is stripping us of our freedom,” said Bob Johnson, who also participated in the demonstration. “I have a granddaughter who is going to turn 10 … and I hate the thought that she may grow up in a socialist country. That’s where we’re headed.”
Sandra Porter, another demonstrator, had a more immediate concern: Hospitals like Mountain View could be put out of business by an ill-conceived reform package, leaving Southwest Virginia residents with nowhere to go for health care.
Smith had his own explanation for the absent MoveOn.org protesters: “They weren’t paid to come out in the rain.”
Mullins said that despite opposition, he believes a health care bill will be passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama “within the next couple of weeks.”
Still, Mullins – who praises the free health care he says is available in Russia – said it will take 30 years of effort for the government to truly get the nation’s health care system where it needs to be.
“No matter what comes out [of Congress], I’m not going to be happy, those people are not going to be happy, nobody’s going to be happy,” he said. “But the way I’m looking at it … this is going to be a starting point.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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