Dozens of people boarded buses early Saturday to joins thousandsof others from across the state for a rally in Bushnell Park inHartford to push for universal health care coverage in Connecticut.
'Connecticut needs it. The nation needs it,' said Aradis Akhtor,an organizer with Christian Community Action of New Haven, who wasamong three- to four-dozen people who boarded a bus shortly befeore10 a.m. in front of Fair Haven Middle School off Grand Avenue.
'The fact that 400,000 people in Connecticut don't have insuranceis just a travesty,' she said. 'The co-pays are high. Medicationsare high. There's no end to it. ... The cheaper thing to do is justto insure everybody.
'If other countries can do it, why can't we?' she asked.
Joining Christian Community Action in organizing the localcontingent were Connecticut Parent Power, the Grand Avenue VillageAssociation and Mayor John DeStefano Jr.'s office. Three other buseswere to leave from Career High school and one was to leave fromSpring Glen Church in Hamden.
Reggie Sizemore of New Haven, one of the people on the bus, saidhe is a diabetic who has been disabled since 2001, and when heneeded major dental work, he eventually had to travel all the way upto the University of Connecticut Medical Center in Farmingtonbecause local clinics that accepted Title 19 were all full and hecouldn't get an appointment.
Sizemore, who needed all of his teeth pulled and had to getfitted for dentures as a complication of his diabetes, said 'it tookme nine months to hook it up before I finally started going.'
Christian Community Action Director of Advocacy and EducationMerrill Eaton said 'the politicians are very much interested in thisissue, but they want to make sure that there is enough public will.'The purpose of Saturday's rally was to let them know how the publicfeels, she said.
Eaton said the issue is of concern to a wide spectrum of people.'Eighty percent of all unisured people are working people,' shesaid. Meanwhile, health care costs rose 15 percent last year whileaverage salaries increased just 2 or 3 percent.
'It really is a crisis situation, Eaton said. 'People are leavingConnecticut because they can't get decent health care. This is anissue that affects everybody. ... The question is, are we willing todo anything about it?'
One politician who doesn't need to be convinced is DeStefano, whocalled for universal health care in his unsuccessful gubernatorialcampaign last year and was there to see the bus off Saturdaymorning.
DeStefano said the rising cost of health care 'is a big small-business issue.'
He favors creating 'pools' that group smaller employers intolarger buying groups to save money and increase their pull in theinsurance marketplace. He favors reducing health care costs 'byproviding adequate prevention' and said universal healthcare 'reallyhas value' because of its potential to do that.
While 'it's easy to demonize and kill a program by saying it'stoo expensive,' as was the case on a federal level early in theClinton administration, 'I think it's going to happen eventually,'DeStefano said.
'I think it's increasingly becoming a middle-class issue, andwhen things become middle-class issues, they tend to get acted on,'he said.
Mark Zaretsky can be reached at mzaretsky@nhregister.com or 789-5722.
