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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

From PA to DC: A March for Health Care Reform

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Monday, February 22, 2010   

PHILADELPHIA - A determined group of people who left Pennsylvania on foot late last week is now in the middle of a march to Washington, demanding that Congress turn debate into action on health care reform. Marc Stier, Pennsylvania state director for the organization Health Care For America Now, says the 'March to the Finish Line for Melanie,' as it's called, is a tribute to Melanie Shouse, an activist who died recently from breast cancer.

"She didn't get the kind of treatment she needed because she didn't have good health insurance. When we heard she died, we decided we wanted to dedicate this march to her."

Stier says Melanie Shouse's story is one playing out all around the country, and he says Americans can't wait any longer for accessible, effective and reasonably-priced health care. He says the marchers will arrive in Washington on Wednesday, February 24, one day ahead of President Obama's high-level meeting on health care, and will hold a rally in the Capital at 2 p.m. that day.

Stier says the march is also for people whose lives are being affected in other ways, namely, those who can't foot the bills.

"It's for all the people who are going broke because they can't afford health care, and it's also for all the people whose families are impacted financially because the price of health insurance is increasing at ten percent a year."

Stier says there are elements of bills already passed that are liked by people responding to public opinion polls.

"When you tell them about stipulations that stop people from being denied care and coverage, or paying more because they have a pre-existing condition, people say, 'Yes, we want that,' by 65 and 75 percent."

The President's high-level health care meeting is being questioned by politicians on both sides of the aisle. Pennsylvania's U.S. Representative Jason Altmire, a Democrat, says a similar session was held a year ago, when the political climate was kinder to his party, and the situation hasn't improved.


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