By ANNA PAIGE

For The Outpost

Hazel Cantrell, who traveled with 19 residents of Wolf Point and the Fort Peck area to attend a rally last week in support of health care reform, watched as a female comrade was shoved to the ground by an angry protester.

“This agitator from the other side came over and asked me how much the Democratic Party was paying me to demonstrate,” Cantrell said. “I told him, ‘I’m here because I want to be.’ He started at me using the f-word and two other guys told him to lay off.”

Cantrell was part of a group of Native Americans who traveled to the rally outside Belgrade during President Barack Obama’s town hall Aug. 14 to advocate for better health care from the Indian Health Service.

“We need more funding, more quality professional health care. We want off of level 12, which means life or limb,” Cantrell said.

Seeming to target women, several of the men protesting shoved females, waved flags and signs in their faces, and one protester even yelled through a bullhorn into the ear of a young female advocate chanting for reform.

“We want, we want health care, health care,” reformists chanted as the opposition added “freedom, freedom” or “welfare, welfare” into the verse.

Though some of the people held discussions about how to best reform the country’s system — deemed broken by Montana’s Democratic leadership — the opposition seemed ready for a fight.

Carrying signs ranging from lectures to Obama about the Constitution to a caricature of him with the Kool-Aid Man, protesters weren’t so much interested in constructive talks as they were in yelling the loudest and standing their ground at all costs, even if it involved physical force.

During the demonstration, the Bozeman Tea Party drove a fire truck with the word “Freedom” painted on the tank at reform advocates, the driver revving the engine and inching through the crowd.

The clash, at Airport Road and East Main Street, grew increasingly heated as health care reform advocates, waving “Reform Now,” “We want single payer” and “Bobcats for Obama” signs, mixed with protesters carrying signs such as “I will not sit down. The Republic will stand,” “The armed citizen is the backbone of our country!” and “Seniors beware of ‘Obama-Care.’”

One protester carrying a skeleton and vocally opposing health care reform said he received health care benefits and services from the Veterans Health Administration.

Several protesters across the country have been quoted as saying, “Keep your hands of my Medicare,” seemingly unaware these programs are provided by the U.S. government.

Further irony centered on the Constitution, as many held signs urging President Obama, a constitutional scholar, to embrace the Second Amendment. During his Saturday tour of Yellowstone, a bill Obama signed in May that permits licensed gun owners to bring firearms into national parks didn’t seem to matter to National Rifle Association supporters as they argued the president is infringing on their constitutional right to bear arms.

Randy Rathie, a man who quickly became a symbol of Montana’s gun supporters, had the opportunity to address the president during the town hall in Belgrade.

“And as you can see, I’m a proud NRA member,” Rathie said during his two minutes of national fame, pointing to his jacket. “I believe in our Constitution, and it’s a very important thing.” His question, though, was regarding higher taxes to support health care reform.

“Max Baucus, our senator, has been locked up in a dark room there for months now trying to come up with some money to pay for these programs. And we keep getting the bull. That’s all we get, is bull. You can’t tell us how you’re going to pay for this,” Rathie said.

President Obama agreed with Rathie that he couldn’t cover another 46 million people for free. Eliminating waste and inefficiencies in the current system can pay for about two-thirds of the health care reform bill, Obama stated. The other third would come from higher taxes.

“When I was campaigning, I made a promise that I would not raise your taxes if you made $250,000 a year or less,” Obama said. “But, I said that for people like myself, who make more than that, there’s nothing wrong with me paying a little bit more in order to help people who’ve got a little bit less.”

As Obama noted when answering Rathie’s question, this type of legislation doesn’t come for free, and if it isn’t paid for, will create further deficits. Obama used the example of the prescription drug bill, which was passed by the previous administration to help senior citizens afford their medications and wasn’t paid for, costing the government hundreds of billions of dollars.

“It just got added on to the deficit and the debt,” Obama said. “So it amuses me sometimes when I hear some of the opponents of health care reform on the other side of the aisle or on these cable shows yelling about how we can’t afford this, when Max and I are actually proposing to pay for it, and they passed something that they didn’t pay for at all and left for future generations to have to pay in terms of debt.”

During the Aug. 14 town hall, Montana’s political leaders, including Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester, joined the president in urging citizens to keep dialogue civil and fact-based, something that has been increasingly lacking as health care reform moves toward the finish line.