Walking Mayor's Powerful Speech for Rural Healthcare - Woodbridge, VA 7/26/14

[freshwest]

Published on Jul 27, 2014

http://www.saveourhospital.org/moral_monday_june_28th_schedule

WASHINGTON DC — "Walking Mayor" Adam O'Neal (R) will complete his 273-mile march from his home town of Belhaven, NC to the U.S. Capitol Building in the name of Medicaid expansion, endangered rural hospitals, and the Pungo District Hospital, which closed on July 1 endangering his community.

A new grassroots organization called SaveOurHospital.org — which launched on the day Mayor O'Neal's walk began on July 14 — has announced a detailed route for Monday July 28, the final morning of the journey. The 3.8 mile walk will begin at Gravelly Point Park in Arlington, VA, just north of Reagan National Airport at 7:30 AM, and arrive at the U.S. Capitol at 11:10 AM where a rally and press conference begins at 11:30.

Two bus-loads of supporters from SaveOurHospital.org will leave Belhaven, NC at midnight, and many will embark with the Mayor at 7:30, while others will join him along the route, which takes him across the 14th Street Bridge to the Jefferson Memorial (8:10 AM), the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial (8:40 AM), the Lincoln Memorial (9.05 AM), the Washington Monument (9:45 AM), the Grant Memorial on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol (10:45 AM), and finally Upper Senate Park (on the eastern, Supreme Court side of the Capitol Building) for the rally at 11:10 AM.

Mayor Adam O'Neal is a 45-year-old conservative Republican who entered elective office to serve a town of 1,700 people, 70% of whom are African American. The town's most important economic engine, Pungo District Hospital was recently purchased and closed by Vidant Health, Inc. The federally designated Critical Access hospital had served over 20 thousand people, including the residents of eastern Beaufort County where Vidant Health operates another hospital 30 miles away in Washington, NC, and neighboring Hyde County which has no hospital and no doctors. Many Hyde County residents had been traveling more than 50 miles to reach Belhaven's hospital. O'Neal believes that adding another 30 miles to that in emergency situations could result in unnecessary deaths. And, many say it already has. On July 5, just 4 days after Vidant Health shut the hospital's doors, Portia Gibbs, 48, died of heart failure while waiting for a helicopter to arrive from Raleigh, which is 162 miles away. Gibbs' husband and son were there to see O'Neal off on his walk, and they gave him a framed picture of Portia to carry with him. He plans to show it to members of Congress, and officials in the Obama administration in two days of meeting about rural protecting hospitals and Medicaid expansion.

More information on this mayor in N.C.:

Incredible: North Carolina Republican Mayor Marches 273 Miles To DC For Medicaid Expansion (Video)



The Mayor said, “It’s immoral for a company to take health care away from people and keep your non-profit designation. We’re also walking to see a bill introduced that HHS has to sign off in order to close a critical-access hospital.”

“The Republicans in my state, many of them kind of support me in a way. They don’t fight with me at all. I think one of the major reasons is there’s no real argument against accepting Medicaid expansion. And I’m afraid that my Republican colleagues in NC are going to get killed this fall because of Medicaid expansion,” the Mayor argued.

“There’s 500,000 people in NC that could have insurance coverage the next 2 years and not cost the state a dime, and the state’s not accepting that,” he remarked.

“Now, if you’re representing the citizens, how can you not do that?…I don’t see how you can represent the citizens of NC and not accept that…So I think we got an issue where folks have dug their heels in on an issue that they need to rethink…and I don’t want to rub anybody’s face in anything because it’s an issue where all of us have to work together. It’s not a Republican or Democrat[ic] issue when this lady starts dying. Now, f you’re doing something that’s causing this lady to start doing, you gotta rethink what you’re doing,” he said.

O’Neal said the governor of North Carolina “won’t meet with us.”

http://www.alan.com/2014/07/27/incredible-north-carolina-republican-mayor-marches-273-miles-to-dc-for-medicaid-expansion-video/

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[sheshe2]

1. "Walking Mayor" Adam O'Neal.

I applaud him. A Republican with a conscious that understands the root of the problem.

He is standing up for his people. And for Portia Gibbs, who died needlessly. Excellent thread, freshwest. The video too was amazing!

It's time America wakes up. Maybe it is finally doing so.

Thank you~

[freshwest]

4. I know three GOPs who will cross the party line every time to save the lives of the poor and the

vulnerable and don't support privatization, destroying public institutions and will not stand by because current solutions aren't perfect by rigid ideology, trends and party labels.

People I know have died for faith based utopias from the right and the left, as the current solutions did not match their vision of how things should be, but they never knew the ones who died. To them, those people were 'collateral damage.'

Not to me or their families or those who knew them. This man may have other views I don't agree with but we are in agreement on saving lives now.

Sometimes, it gets down to just that and Obama knows it, too.

[sheshe2]

5. They are not all brain dead in that party.

I know three GOPs who will cross the party line every time to save the lives of the poor and the vulnerable and don't support privatization, destroying public institutions and will not stand by because current solutions aren't perfect by rigid ideology, trends and party labels.

No, I agree with you that there are many issues that we will never agree with them on, however this one I do. It gives me some hope, freshwest!

Again, great OP as always.

[freshwest]

2. Newer thread by herding cats, take a look:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251372334#op

[Thinkingabout]

3. This guy makes a lot of sense, something the governors and legislators could take a clue.

The A$$hole blocking which is preventing health care coverage affects both Democrats and Republicans. It is time to get off their duffs and act.