Cars were lined up for blocks Wednesday afternoon as people tried to get to Sen. Ben Nelson's town hall meeting. Fifteen minutes after the meeting got under way on the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus, cars still stretched along Emile Street from 45th to 42nd and three blocks north to Farnam Street. Loudspeakers were set up so the 600 people in the spillover crowd could hear the meeting.
Public option
Jane Dodson, who has worked in health care as a psychotherapist for 30 years, held a sign reading, “Public option = freedom in health care.” “I can't understand why we're paying (insurers) 20 percent profit for nothing and leaving fellow Americans out of the loop for health care,” she said. “I believe the smartest choice right now is the public option.”
Being heard
Jerry Anderson, an Air Force veteran, said he came because it was “important that the people be heard.” He held a sign that said, “Congress, hands off our health care” on one side and “Stop spending our kids' future” on the other.
Common thirst
Christopher Tiwald, field director of Change That Works, bought bottled water and distributed it throughout the crowd. Some of the people who disagreed with his pro-public option position were helping him. “I know we don't agree on health care, but we can agree that it's hot and people need water,” Tiwald said.
Common man
Lloyd Peterson and Kate Mellen Peterson got inside the building but not into the meeting. They were among the 300 people who watched Nelson on a TV screen. Mellen Peterson said the meeting was too subdued. “I'd have liked it a little more raucous,” she said. She called the U.S. health care system the best in the world and said attending Nelson's talk was important. “It's our cry for democracy, free enterprise and the capitalistic system which our whole country was based on,” she said. “Senator Nelson doesn't realize how angry this country's working people are,” she said, pointing out that the 1:30 p.m. timing of the event effectively prevented a lot of those working people from attending.
Contact the writer: 444-1074, john.keenan@owh.com
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