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    “It’s Just Ridiculous…Which is it?”

    avatarBy No Comments1 Min Read

    The quote of the day on Obama’s health care plan belongs to Rowena Ventura. “You see,” she said, gesturing at Mr. Obama on the television (during his press conference last Tuesday night), “he’s saying he wants to continue private insurance, but then he says they’re part of the problem. Well, which is it? It’s just ridiculous.”

    Rowena Verntura, 44, is an uninsured worker from Cleveland, OH, who just moved her ailing mother into a house she shares with her disabled husband. 

    She is quoted in Kevin Sack, “For Public, Obama Didn’t Fill in Health Blanks,” New York Times, July 23, 2009, p. A1, read online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/health/policy/24voices.html?ref=todayspaper

    She’s right.  It is ridiculous.

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    Paul Street is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, journalist, historian, author and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of more than ten books and numerous essays. Street has taught U.S. history at numerous of Chicago-area colleges and universities. He was the Director of Research and Vice President for Research and Planning at the Chicago Urban League (from 2000 through 2005), where he published a highly influential grant-funded study: The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (October 2002).

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