Manatee residents among about 180 at rally against Senate health care bill

Saying it will make insurance coverage costlier for low-income Americans, the elderly, children and those with disabilities, a crowd estimated at 180 on Sunday declared their rejection of the new Senate national health care bill during a rally along Bayfront Drive near the Unconditional Surrender statue in downtown Sarasota.

With signs like “We Watch. We Learn. We Vote,” “Defend Good Existing Health Care!” and “Trump is Fake Health Care,” the activists, including many from Manatee County, rang cowbells at passing traffic and followed the lead of a volunteer on a bullhorn who chanted, “What do we want? Health care! When do we want it? Now!”

“Health care affects everybody,” said Dwight Brown of the organization “Indivisible Venice,” one of several organizations, including Action Together Suncoast, Indivisible Bradenton and Progressive Sarasota, that had members at the rally. “Health care impacts everybody. I just wish Bernie Sanders were here because this Senate health care bill is all about transferring money from the poor to the rich.”

Sanders, who lost out to Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic presidential nominee, is currently speaking around the country about his belief in Medicare for all.

“I feel health care is a human right,” said Bradenton’s Marcia Petersen, who held her own sign that read: “I didn’t survive cancer to die from the stress of losing my health care.”

“It’s not a political party right,” Petersen added. “It’s not a right that belongs to any one group. It belongs to us all. We have elderly seniors who are counting on their Medicaid.”

Deanie Bergbreiter of Progressive Sarasota said that perhaps in no other American city is the gulf between the rich and the poor steeper than Sarasota.

“Nobody in Sarasota County, which is one of the best places in America to live and also one of the wealthiest counties in America, should have to suffer from hunger, illness, mental illness or lack of adequate housing,” said Deanie Bergbreiter of Progressive Sarasota. “There are basic fundamental needs that we, as a country, can provide to everyone if we put people over profit.”

A single payer health system

A common theme among protestors was their strong desire, in the face of estimates that millions of Americans could lose their Medicaid and private marketplace coverage if the Senate health care bill passed, to move toward Sanders’ idea of Medicare for all, a single-payer system that will guarantee health care for all.

Palmetto’s Jenni Casale, a member of Action Together Suncoast, supports a single payer system for America.

“Health care for me is a critical issue for our society,” Casale said. “I am a firm believer that we need universal health care. Every other western democracy has it and we don’t, and we need to move toward that, and this bill moves us further away from that.

“Obamacare moved us a little toward that,” Casale added. “It wasn’t perfect, but it at least moved us closer to more people being covered, and I don’t want to see us move away from that. This is important to me. My husband is a three-time cancer survivor and had he not had good health care, he would not be with me today. He would have died with the first one. I don’t want to see that happen to other families. This is personal for me.”

Many in the crowd carried signs that simply read “Call Rubio,” and had Senator Marco Rubio’s work phone number in Washington, 202-224-3041.

“One of the purposes of this rally is to let Senator Rubio know we oppose the Senate bill,” said Dianne Perry, president and founder of Action Together Suncoast.

The discussion about “Medicare for all” comes about a month after officials in California announced that the annual price tag for a single payer health care system in California would be $400 billion, well exceeding the total of $179.5 billion set aside for the entire California state budget for the year, according to a report from the state of California.

This story was originally published June 25, 2017 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Manatee residents among about 180 at rally against Senate health care bill."