KTVN Channel 2 - Reno Tahoe News Weather, Video - Dems Call for Support on Health Care Reform
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As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on a health care reform bill, local volunteers are urging Washoe County residents to call their representatives in Congress to make sure something gets done, and fast.
According to a new poll by the non-partisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one-third of Americans are concerned about losing health care coverage in the next year. Forty percent of young people are worried, and 29-percent of seniors feel they too could lose their insurance benefits soon.
Later this week, republicans will rally against Senator Harry Reid and the democratic health care reform bill, but Tuesday evening, democrats made their calls to action.
They are calling this a "Time to Deliver" and it happened all over the country.
Volunteers spent the evening Tuesday calling voters, mostly democrats, urging them to contact their representatives and senators.
"These folks are here as many are around the nation right now--just voicing that saying I feel this way. I feel it's important, letting our elected officials know that they need to act," Dave Osolnick with Organizing America says.
And these volunteers are dialing as many as fifty voters each, to give out the office numbers of elected officials like Senator Reid and GOP Congressman Dean Heller to support health care reform.
For the last two years in Reno, Barbara Glueck has been unemployed and without health insurance. That's why she's volunteering.
She says, universal health care is "amazing" after living in Germany for more than 20 years.
"They paid for 100% medical, 100%," Glueck says.
It's a message she's telling voters. She says, there is power in numbers with a national effort like this. "We set a goal actually of a hundred thousand it was met by 11 o' clock this morning," Glueck says.
They raised the bar, to reach 200,000 voters. But Michele Beard with the Washoe County Republican Party says phone calls won't really impact the public much.
"They don't want to hear about a phone call saying, 'Hey support health care reform.' They want to hear what someone's going to do about it," Beard says.
Still, the Republican Party is getting their message across via the Internet.
"We've been encouraging folks via e-mail to contact their representatives by telephone, by e-mail by writing," Beard says.
Beard says, the democrats' plan is just too costly. But she does agree some kind of reform is needed.
"We need to do it smartly and we need to take our time and make sure we do it right," Beard says.
