New Hampshire - "Community Bake Sale To Help Injured Teen"

[TomCADem]

This is in response to the President's critics who say that we should hit the reset button on health care reform. Of course, according to Whole Food's CEO, all they needed to do was eat more at Whole Foods, and health care reform is unnecessary.

http://www.wmur.com/news/21010264/detail.html

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The Hampstead community is rallying to support a mother and daughter injured while on vacation in the Caribbean.

Raquel Welch and her 13-year-old daughter, Paige, were visiting friends and family on a trip for two weddings. A 28-foot speedboat crashed over a kayak in which the two were riding with a cousin off the island of Trinidad.

The crash injured Raquel Welch, and left Paige with a life-changing amputation. Husband and father Clarke Welch said the speedboat crashed over the tiny kayak, severely cutting his wife and severing Paige's arm.

As she sank to the bottom of the ocean, Paige's cousin -- who was also injured in the accident -- swam after her.

"He has a crushed ankle, a severed Achilles tendon and he's diving down to get his cousin. He's in excruciating pain," Clarke Welch said. "To have him do that, I owe him everything I have."

While Clarke Welch was back in Hampstead, the Coast Guard was plucking Paige, her cousin and her mother from the water. It took Clarke Welch more than a day to get down to Trinidad, where he paid $32,000 to get Paige an emergency flight back to Boston.

At Children's Hospital, it was clear Paige would survive, but surgeons made a difficult decision to remove part of her hand and most of her forearm.

"Raquel and I sat down with Paige, and we told her, and my daughter said, 'My hand? I'm alive.' How do you get a 13-year-old to understand that?" Clarke Welch said.

As Paige continued to recover, her friends and family began raising money at a bake sale Saturday morning in an effort to help offset tens of thousands of dollars in expenses from the accident.

"We're lucky she's alive, that's a given," Clarke Welch said. "She was on her way to dying."

If there's a light for this family after a tragic accident, friends and family are it.

Clarke Welch hadn't heard the total raised from the bake sale until WMUR News 9's Aaron Kellogg broke the news.

"The total from the bake sale today was $1,529," Kellogg said.

"My gosh, $1,529? That goes to show you that small-town America does come together to help people in need," Clarke Welch said. "Thank you. Thank you everybody."

Paige's family is working on setting up a fund to help with her medical expenses.

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[robo50]

1. I think Obama should turn over all Health Care reforms to .. community

bake sales......

Come to think of it, that's what it looks like he is doing.

[TomCADem]

5. President Obama's Health Care Plan Is More Bake Sales?

I think you are confusing President Obama with Senator Tom Coburn:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/25/coburn-weeping-wife/

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Yesterday CNN’s Rick Sanchez aired a segment from a health care town hall where a weeping constituent explained to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that her husband’s health insurer refuses to cover his treatment for a traumatic brain injury. As the woman continued to cry, Coburn told her that his office would try to assist her individually. But, he added, “the idea that the government is the solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.”

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[crim son]

2. This happens all the time in rural Maine.

People can't afford health insurance and then their kid gets cancer. The fundraisers are never enough, sadly. I've seen it over and over again.

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. Not just cancer...

..New Lungs for George in New Gloucester has its own website.

[rockymountaindem]

3. The implications of the national health-care debate to families like this are obvious

I know it's probably crass of me to point that out, but cases like this highlight the reasons we need universal health insurance. Even the healthy need care for reasons nobody can foresee, and it's extremely expensive. If we had universal coverage, no bake sale would be necessary and this family could focus on getting well and moving on as best they can instead of having to worry about money.

The whole time this debate has been raging I've been thinking about one thing. Three years ago, during a summer break while I was attending the University of Toronto (living under their single-payer system, which fortunately I was never forced to call upon), my family and I took a road trip through Montana. We stopped at a small gas station in the middle of a small, obviously poor community (I think it was on the edge of an Indian Reservation). As my dad pumped gas I went inside to get a bag of M&M's for my mom and I. At the counter there was a plastic jug with the picture of a little girl, maybe six years old on it. There was a paragraph about how this girl was suffering from leukemia and needed to pay for treatment, but that her parents could not afford everything she needed - please donate.

What was happening hit me right away: this family, obviously of modest or below modest means, was forced to ask people from their own struggling community to leave their nickels and dimes in a jug at the Texaco station so they could get health care for their little girl who was facing something no child should have to face. It shouldn't come to that. Needless to say it wasn't lost on me that a couple hundred miles away in Alberta such a display would be inconceivable and that if this girl had been born there, her face wouldn't have to be up there next to the beef jerky and scratch tickets vying for our attention and our quarters.

While this health care reform debate goes on I've been thinking about her, and wondering if she survived. Those are the people we need to win this fight for.

[XemaSab]

6. Virtually every time I go to the store

there is a jar out for someone. :(

[LibDemAlways]

7. I would love to be part of a march on Washington of a million or more

people carrying signs with pictures of those jars or other references to such fundraisers, and under each in big letters the word SHAME. Call it the million outraged citizens march. There's something very wrong about a country with a surplus of millionaires and plenty of money to wage wars, and yet the basic needs of people- including decent medical care at a reasonable cost -are going unmet and people are resorting to begging to cover even a fraction of the overwhelming expense.

[ezgoingrl]

8. I hope they are able to raise enough money.

In my community there is a 6 month old baby boy who has kidney cancer. There was a fundraising dinner a couple of weeks ago, in spite of my pointing out that if we had national healthcare his parents would only have to worry about helping him get better, the lovely repukes I know are still dead-set against any kind of healthcare reform.

[pansypoo53219]

9. where's the speedboater?

seems they should pony up some cash.

[busymom]

10. not only that

aren't they required to carry some sort of insurance coverage? Would homeowners ins. cover that? Hmmmm.