Gateway Pundit Hosts Obamacare Protest at Democrat Senator’s Office Saturday

NOT A “GOOD DEAL” FOR AMERICANS

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 20, 2013) — On Thursday, Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit published a reminder to press release announcing that he and others will be gathering at the St. Louis district office of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) on Saturday to protest Obamacare.

Hoft has called the event a “Wheel-in” and asked that as many people as possible attend from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon CST outside of McCaskill’s office at 5850 Delmar Blvd, Ste. A, St. Louis.

The Post & Email contacted Mr. Hoft to find out more about the event and what he hopes to accomplish.  Hoft is one of nearly 6,000,000 Americans who will be losing his health care plan at the end of the month as a result of Obamacare.

During the interview, he shared some stunning life events with us.  He has shared his incredible story of survival with radio show host Larry Kudlow, and Rush Limbaugh discussed it at length on December 11.

“While much of the focus of late has been on the catastrophic failure of the Obamacare website, the true failure of this disastrous law is the law itself. Simply put, Obamacare is not a bad website, it is bad law. Obamacare provides a list that grows daily of broken promises by Democrats to the American people. Senator McCaskill voted in favor of this assault on individual liberty and owes the voters in her state answers,” Hoft wrote in the announcement.

He termed Obamacare a result of a “destructive power grab” on the part of the Obama regime.

When we asked Hoft whose idea it was to hold the rally, he responded:

The idea was actually mine.  I had been an active member in the Tea Party of St. Louis. We had been relatively asleep and doing other things the past year and a half like many Tea Partiers across the country.  Yet here, since the Obamacare plan started in October, I think a lot of Americans are finally waking up and feeling really frustrated with what this means personally.

I just went through a horrible experience medically.  I got very sick in August.  I was doing a rally in Los Angeles, and that night I was at the Reagan Library for an event and got sick.  I thought I had a cold.  Three or four days later, I lost vision in my eye and wasn’t feeling any better, so I knew that something was wrong.  I went to the hospital and had a medical emergency.  I had a strep bacteria which happened to poison my bloodstream.  That’s why it tore out my knee and effectively pierced my heart.  That’s when I had the strokes. I lost my left eye, had five strokes, massive heart damage and barely survived the surgery.  So it’s been a very trying five months for me.

I have to tell you, I was knocking on death’s door several times, and for some reason I made it through.  I had a lot of people praying for me, and I am just so grateful to be where I am today.

I am still in a wheelchair.

A couple of weeks ago I found out that I was going to lose my insurance.  I have a very good insurance plan with a national company, and they took very good care of me.  They kept calling me at home to see how I was doing and while I was in the hospital.  This was something I paid for, just like most Americans.  You do what you can, and I chose to pay more for my insurance.  They covered all of the expenses, which were more than $1,00o,000.

I found out that they’re leaving the state of Missouri now because of Obamacare, so I wrote about it.  It got some national attention on Rush Limbaugh’s show; he actually did a whole segment on it.  I was on with Larry Kudlow on The Kudlow Report, and I was on with Dana Loesch, who is a friend of mine, and talked about this and realized that it was time for people to put down the newspapers, get up from the couches and get back on the streets.

I believe strongly that this is a very intrusive law, and it just shocks me…the arrogance of this government that they can tell us that we have to pay for something whether we want it or not.  Now I find that I’m at a loss because I have to look for new insurance.  After this whole ordeal, the last thing I wanted to do was look for new insurance.  That’s the place I’m at right now.

The Post & Email responded, “I had no idea of your story and what you had been through.”

 I’m just so grateful today and this holiday season.  I really shouldn’t be here.  There were several times during a couple of weeks, especially, when they just didn’t have a lot of hope.  The other part of this is that I chose to go to a research hospital in St. Louis where they had excellent care, excellent physicians.  They’re teaching these young people how to be good doctors.  So it’s an exceptional facility.  I’m still in the process of finding new insurance.  It would be devastating to me to lose my doctors, but that’s a very real possibility.

Because we had some successful rallies outside of Claire McCaskill’s office back in 2009, I thought this would be a place where we could start again.  You never know, especially with the weather and the holiday, but I’m hoping that we get 100 people or more who will show up outside her office and hold a little rally.

Have you met Sen. McCaskill personally?

I’ve met her a few times, yes.

Based on those prior encounters, do you think she has any idea of what people are going through who are losing their health insurance?

She put out a statement the other week announcing that she was going to hold an event where she signed up for Obamacare, and she made it sound like a good deal.  Here’s the thing with Claire, though:  she’s worth millions, of course.  It’s not going to be a burden for her to pay for her health care.  It’s a burden for the average family, though, which is going to have to come up with extra money to pay for the higher premiums.  It’s almost offensive the way she lacks the ability to see what we’re suffering because of this.

That seems to be a general problem with members of Congress:  they’re totally detached from the lives that you and I are living.

Absolutely.  That’s a great line, too; I’ll use that tomorrow.  I think there are plenty of people who are getting pretty sick and tired of it.  I think there’s actually a lot of energy out there right now.  Also arising this week, and this has nothing to do with Obamacare, was when they fired Phil Robinson.   That got a lot of people excited, too.  It’s just another way that they’re taking away our freedoms, telling us how to act, how to think, what god we can pray to, where we have to buy our insurance, and how much we have to pay.  It’s way too much for most people.

It looks as if a lot of people are beginning to understand that the government has reached into each and every household in America now and that Obamacare was born out of corruption.

It was based on lies.  The whole bill was based on several lies that Obama repeated often.  I put up a post this week that back in 2010 when he had a joint session with congressional leaders, he told them that 8 or 9 million Americans would likely lose their insurance.  Then after that, he went out and said 17 times that you can keep your insurance.  It was a complete lie.  It wasn’t a misstatement; he was lying and he knew it, just as he said several times that it wouldn’t cover abortion; you can keep your doctor; you can keep the hospital you want to go to.  It was all a lie, and I believe they absolutely knew it.

Do you think we have ever seen anything like this before wherein a (de facto) president goes out there and just glibly lies through his teeth?

I don’t think so.  Several authors much older than I say the same thing; they’ve never seen anything like it.  One thing about Barack Obama:  he gives us lots of information and choices about what to write about.  Generally, every time I hear him speak, there’s something where I shake my head and say, “That isn’t true.”  It’s just unfortunate that most of the American public doesn’t stay as in-touch. I think that’s what the left wants so that people are not as informed as they should be.

Do you expect that  Sen. McCaskill will be at the rally tomorrow?

I doubt it. She’s on vacation right now.  I’m sure she hightailed it out of St. Louis.  I’d be surprised if she is there, but if she is, that would be great.  We could ask her a few questions.

She was also one of these senators who made lots of promises to us and none of that has come true.  She won re-election last year, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to give her a pass for the next five years, because we’re not.

Have you spoken with your representative and the other Missouri senator?

I am a friend of Sen. (Roy) Blunt, although I don’t see him very much.  There is a local representative in St. Louis by the last name of “Clay” whose father was also a representative.  He’s a pretty far-left, big-government guy.  I would almost suggest he’s a communist.  He’s one of those people who thinks there needs to be serious redistribution. I don’t have much of a relationship with him.  I do have a relationship with Rep. Ann Wagner; she’s a personal friend, and I think she represents us well.  She’s also a very nice person.

I know Rep. Wagner would like to see Obamacare repealed.

Yes.

Are you getting good medical care now?

I’m getting exceptional medical care.  I really wouldn’t be here today without the care I’ve had; that’s why it’s so concerning.  We’ve heard the story of the cancer patient.  In a similar mode, I am going to do what I have to do to continue getting the care from St. Louis University, regardless of what this law means .  It is frightening, and it puts me in a place where I don’t want to be looking for insurance right now…I want to focus on therapy and my responsibilities and trying to make a living.  It is what it is.

I feel sorry that other people have to go through this, too.  There are millions of Americans going through this. I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford what I believe is good insurance; I just feel so sad for these other people who are paying high premiums and are going to be stuck with a $5,000 or $6,000 deductible next year.

As I said, it really is a miracle that I’m sitting here today, and maybe someday I’ll figure out why I survived all of this.