Protestors Stage Mock Death Outside RNC Headquarters

By Mike Hothi

Dozens of protestors gathered outside the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters Tuesday to stage the mock death of an emergency room patient. 

The demonstrators, calling themselves Code Blue, were rallying against cuts to Medicare and Medicaid proposed in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis) budget plan. Under the proposal, Medicaid reform would cut roughly $1 trillion over 10 years, turning it into a block grant to the states. 

One demonstrator dressed as a hospital patient was laid out on a gourney and pretended to go into cardiac arrest. As the demonstration continued, a man calling himself the budget cutter went around and forced nurses to quit helping the dying patient because they couldn’t afford it. 

“Nurses from big cities and small towns have gathered here to call a code blue on our healthcare system. We are also here to call a code blue on the Republican mission to shift more healthcare costs onto seniors and working families,” one activist shouted.

Diane Palmer, a nurse from Wisconsin stated, “this is dangerous to our patients and its dangerous for jobs in America. We are saying no cuts.”

Ryan Explains Opposition To Fiscal Commission's Plan

In a USA Today editorial on Monday, the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee outlined his opposition to the plan released last week by President Obama’s debt commission.

After calling the commission “a success” for sparking a “critical debate about the biggest problem facing this country,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) criticized the plan’s failure to address health care costs and said that the plan would “take us in the wrong direction” on health care entitlement programs.

Ryan also found fault with the commission’s proposal to eliminate tax deductions as a way to offset the cost of lowering tax rates for both individuals and corporations.

Tax increases, Ryan said, “would stifle growth and prosperity.”

Currently, the U.S. is mired in a strugging economy in which the unemployement rate is nearly 10%.

Although Ryan voted against sending the plan to Congress, he acknowledged that he is “eager to build upon” several components of the proposal “when we write next year’s budget.”

Click here for more on the story…