Day four of the "Road to Change" kicked off this morning with a town hall meeting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The crowd of more than 2,000 people was, as always, fired up and ready to ask Barack many questions about his plans and policies.One resident asked Barack how he would take power away from drug companies, and provide funding for substance abuse prevention and mental health programs. Barack said:
The insurance companies are some of the biggest players in Washington. That's why it's so important to not have them finance your campaigns. They've come to dominate the system so much that our healthcare system is not working for the American people.If you have health insurance now, your biggest problem is rising costs. In addition, many Americans don't even have health insurance. My healthcare plan will be available to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to Members of Congress. There will be affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles, and no American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions. The more prevention we emphasize, the more long term savings we will get in the health care system.I'm a strong supporter of mental health parity in our healthcare system. To me that falls in the category of prevention, and it's good for society as a whole. If you talk to police officers, especially in urban areas, they would tell you that instead of preventing crime, a lot of their time is spent dealing with social services that could have been prevented if we had invested in prevention and treatment.
Most of the damages to civil liberties were not done by the Patriot Act, they were done by Executive Orders under President Bush. When I'm President, I will call in my Attorney General to look over all the Executive Orders that were issued and I will overturn ones that take away our civil liberties....There are some parts of the second Patriot Act that are good. Before the Patriot Act, you couldn't wiretap phones that weren't land-based. However, this prevented us from being able to wiretap terrorists' phones because people who are engaging in terrorism are not going to use land-based phones.I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years. I take the Constitution very seriously and will continue to do so as President.
After the event, I spoke to Mary and William who live here in Lancaster. William, a retired truck driver and member of the Teamsters union, thought that Barack's answers were "right on target" and really liked what Barack had to say about the economy and education. He likes how Barack wants to focus on problems with public education and invest more money in public schools. Mary, who originally supported Senator Clinton, recently switched her support to Senator Obama because she believes that "he will be better able to unify the country." Mary really liked how Barack explained his policies and plans in ways that were easy for folks to understand. She said, "he doesn't talk down to people, and he makes it simple so that even children can understand how he's going to address our problems."
Stay tuned for more coverage of the "Road to Change!"
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