by DANIELLE CANADA August 25, 2009, 13:09pm
HipHopWired contributor and headstrong Black intellect, Dr. Boyce Watkins had a meeting of the minds August 19th with the honorable Reverend Al Sharpton over several topics. The Black figureheads engaged listeners on Sharpton's radio show on 1380 WAOK particularly touching on President Obama's health care reform plan, the president's reaction to the Henry Louis Gates Jr. Case, and the reinstatement of NFL quarterback, Michael Vick. The Reverend posed a question to the intellect asking his opinion on the president's consideration to remove “public option” out of the reform bill. He poses the question saying:
“If public option is out, does that kill reform as a real reform?”
To which Dr. Watkins responds:
“I don't think it kills the ability of it to be real reform, I think it's a compromise that I didn't necessarily want to see happen. If you look at what's happened with the president and his ability to do the impossible. I don't know what's more impossible. Him being elected the first Black president or trying to reform a system that is incredibly flawed and filled with so many individual interests. You can't imagine somebody being able to do that, a lot of people's careers have been ruined for trying to take on this system. So I applaud the president for doing that. I think that at this point we have to stick to the guns, keep our eye on the prize and that is that there are millions and millions of Americans who can't get insurance. People who are limited by preexisting conditions that are uninsurable, millions of Americans go bankrupt because of medical bills. So my big question with health insurance has always been, what are the hospitals going to contribute to this? What are the pharmaceutical companies going to contribute this? That's the most profitable industry in America or at one of the top three and it's because they charge a lot of money for drugs that shouldn't cost as much as they actually do cost."
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