Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9408010083
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Some opponents, led by former anti-abortion activist and radio commentator Randall Terry, tried to turn a pro-Clinton reform rally at the Henry Street Music Center into a rowdy "in-your-face" affair.
A competing rally on the Roanoke City Market, featuring 6th District Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, and other opponents of Clinton's reform plan, also drew a crowd..
Supporters, including representatives of Roanoke's Total Action Against Poverty and local labor unions, spoke enthusiastically at Henry Street for Clinton's health care proposals, particularly coverage for all Americans with employers paying part of the bill.
Opponents of the Clinton plan said they aren't against health care reform but said it should be left up to private enterprise. A government-run plan would lead to less coverage at higher costs, they said.
Anti-abortion demonstrators attended both rallies, carrying signs with the message that taxpayer money to fund abortions should not be a part of health care reform.
When two buses of Clinton's Health Security Express rolled onto Henry Street about noon, a bus with Terry and his group Loyal Opposition was waiting. Terry is a Binghamton, N.Y., resident who became nationally known for his leadership of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and who now has his own syndicated radio show.
The Terry bus was painted with lists of allegations against Clinton, ranging from adultery to money laundering. Terry was selling copies of "The Clinton Chronicles," the same videotape of allegations against Clinton that the Rev. Jerry Falwell offered to his television audience earlier this year.
Terry was more interested in talking about the allegations against Clinton than health care reform. He said that Americans are more interested in Congress investigating the allegations than in Congress passing health care reform legislation.
When people began moving into the music center for the rally, Terry and others engaged them in a shouting match. Then Terry's group, joined by some of the anti-abortion demonstrators, stood on the sidewalk outside the center during the rally, shouting slogans as Roanoke police guarded the door to keep them out.
Although the Clinton buses carried riders from around the country who had their own health care stories to tell, a woman from Roanoke gave the most stirring testimony at the Henry Street rally.
Anne Leffler, with tears in her eyes, said she chose to stay on welfare so that her 3-year-old son could get Medicaid coverage for heart surgery in May. "This is not a choice I should have had to make," she said.
She has a family history of deadly skin cancer, Leffler said. She shouldn't have to choose between getting off welfare and her own health, she said.
Martin Jeffrey, a director of Total Action Against Poverty's community development and outreach programs, said one of his agency's biggest concerns is the inability of the working poor to get health care coverage.
Roanoke Vice Mayor John Edwards told the rally that the middle class and small-business people will benefit most by universal coverage. Their health care premiums go up year after year because they are paying for the 38 million Americans who don't have insurance, he said.
Gerald Meadows, president of Roanoke's Central Labor Council, said Goodlatte should be ashamed of himself because he doesn't want his masters in the big corporations to pay for their employees' health care, while Goodlatte's own health care is paid for by his constituents. Goodlatte said he had the same insurance as any other federal employee.
Most of the people in the Henry Street audience were union members. U.S. labor unions are the primary sponsors of the bus tour.
The two buses that stopped in Roanoke on Sunday started their trek Thursday in New Orleans, passing through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia on their way to Washington, where they will arrive Tuesday and meet up with buses from other parts of the country as Congress begins debate on health care legislation.
About 150 people, a slightly larger crowd than the gathering on Henry Street, were at the anti-Clinton reform rally on the City Market, which was sponsored by the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber Vice President Daniel "Bud" Oakey said the chamber favors reforms in the health care system but not a system that requires new employers to pay coverage for their employees.
Of the chamber's 1,900-member companies, 52 percent employ fewer than five people, but 98 percent employ fewer than 100 people, Oakey said.
The chamber would support reforms that would reduce costs and not increase government bureaucracy, Oakey said. Such reforms would include changes in medical malpractice law, self-insurance or insurance pools for employers, and a system that would allow people to buy insurance and keep it no matter what their claims experience or whether they change jobs .
Joining Oakey on the tractor-trailer decorated in red, white and blue for the Market Square rally was Goodlatte.
Goodlatte said Clinton's health care plan would lead to higher taxes, job losses, reduced wages, price controls and rationing. It also would lead to bureaucrats deciding what kind of coverage people would receive, he said.
He agreed with the chamber's vision of reform, including 100 percent tax deductibility for the health care costs of the self-employed, putting them on the same footing with corporations.
Also speaking at the rally were Dick Robers, president of the Blue Ridge Regional Health Care Coalition of businesses, and Bill Russell, vice president of Lewis-Gale Hospital.
Robers said Clinton's plan was a movement toward socialism. "Only free market competition will bring about affordable health care," he said.
Employer mandates will make American products less competitive in the global market, he said.
Russell agreed that reforms need to be "market-based." He gave credit to Clinton, however, for raising the issue of reform and said the market has responded with the lowest inflation rate for health care costs in 20 years.
From that standpoint Russell agreed with an influential Roanoke supporter of the Clinton plan.
Cabell Brand, president of the Total Action Against Poverty board of directors, told the crowd at Henry Street that they wouldn't be talking about health care at all if it weren't for Clinton.
"He put the issue on the table," he said.
by CNB