Hillary Rodham Clinton took her health-care crusade to rural America on Friday and promised that the president's plan would deliver more doctors, more dollars and new technology to struggling remote towns.
Clinton, joined by several members of Congress from four upper Midwestern states, listened as a panel of two dozen farmers, small-town merchants, Indian leaders, doctors and nurses cited the frustration of soaring insurance costs, shrinking budgets and too few health-care providers."We have to be sure there's medical care out there to be taken advantage of," the first lady told 1,000 people crowded in the Lennox High School gymnasium, about 25 miles south of Sioux Falls. "There are many, many ideas in the president's plan that will help rural America."
Among those she cited: plans to beef up medical staffing in remote areas, more funding for hospitals and clinics in those communities, and technology to link doctors to sophisticated medical schools.
Clinton's appearance at the Great Plains Summit on Rural Health Care capped a week of high-profile campaigning by her and the president to shore up support for the administration's plan to guarantee health insurance to all Americans. Cabinet members fanned out across the country Friday on a similar mission.
"We could not design a system more complicated than the one we currently have," Clinton said. "We could not create a system that deliberately eliminated people more effectively than the one we already have."
The first lady was greeted warmly, though a few people objected to the president's plan.
"The consensus I hear is that people do not want a completely new system," said Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D. "We do not want to create a whole new federal bureaucracy."
But his South Dakota colleague, Sen. Tom Daschle, a Democrat, disagreed.
"Those who pay are paying for those who don't," he said. "It's an unfair mandate we've got to get rid of."
The panelists from South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska all detailed shortcomings in rural health care. Daschle noted, for example, that there are shortages of primary care physicians in two-thirds of his state.
Rural health-care limitations were poignantly illustrated by John Thompson, a gritty 20-year-old from North Dakota, who captivated the nation two years ago when his arms were ripped from his body in a farm accident and he used a pencil through clenched teeth to telephone for help.
Sitting next to Clinton, Thompson listed the obstacles he faced that day: no 911 emergency phone system; the nearest ambulance 12 miles away; and the nearest hospital, 30 miles away.
A surgeon reattached Thompson's arms. He can move his wrist and has regained feeling in his fingers.