Sacramento area has rallies on eve of health care vote
On the eve of a crucial congressional vote on health care legislation, dueling sides in the debate toted signs, gathered on college campuses and took to the phones on Saturday to make last-minute appeals to influence the outcome of a yearlong political drama that could culminate today in Congress.
"We're all on pins and needles. This is going to be a historic vote," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California and a supporter of the $940 billion health care overhaul legislation.
"It's not everything we wanted, but it's an important step. It's a step that hasn't been taken in 45 years," he said, not since the 1965 passage of the Medicare and Medicaid federal health insurance programs.
On Saturday, Wright and other overhaul boosters gathered at California State University, Sacramento, to press California's delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives to support the health care bill.
They got crucial support from two Central Valley congressmen – Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, and Jim Costa, D-Fresno – both moderate Blue Dog Democrats who had been wavering because of their concern over the abortion issue.
Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, has been helping the Democratic leadership herd votes to win passage for the bill.
"We know that insurance companies have been given a free ride. So, we want to hold them accountable," she said Saturday during a critical session of the House Rules Committee, a necessary prelude to today's vote.
Cardoza announced his support at the Rules Committee meeting.
Meanwhile, local opponents of the overhaul bill toted signs on sidewalks near the Galleria at Roseville to urge Congress to "Kill the Bill."
Both sides have been working phone banks over the past week to lobby members of Congress.
Karin Zink, a registered nurse from Redding who was at the CSUS campus on Saturday visiting her son, knows the high stakes involved, but confessed to not having a mastery of the details.
She supports the legislation's intentions, she said, but "things change so often that it's difficult to keep up."
Like other Americans, she said, she doesn't know where the system first went wrong. "Who knows what's at the center of the problem? I just want to know, who's going to be speaking for us?
"Right now, most people are only paying attention to the fight," she said. "Maybe people like the controversy. But it's difficult to say whether people really do understand what's going on."
Margie Metzler, 65, of the Gray Panthers and the Older Women's League took part in the CSUS rally. She said she was uninsured for four years before becoming eligible for Medicare. "That was the most terrifying time in my life," she said.
Following the rally, about 60 people sat through a forum on health care.
Craig DeLuz, a Republican candidate for Assembly and opponent of the health care bill, was outnumbered on the panel.
He called the bill "a wholesale big-government takeover of our health care system."
His brother David DeLuz, who also took part on the panel, disagreed. David DeLuz, president of the Greater Sacramento Urban League, called today's expected vote historic, adding that it represented an opportunity for working families to get affordable health care coverage.