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posted 10-08-2009 10:50
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This post is mainly directed at the US posters, but I suppose it will also serve as a general universal healthcare thread.
My question is, how bad is the situation with these townhall meetings really? Through the lens of the blogs and the Daily Show, the protests appear to be escalating very scarily, and it seems like only a matter of time before someone gets seriously injured or killed. The healthcare issue seems to have become a locus for all the crazy conspiracy theories about Obama, abetted by various GOP pressure groups, and the Democratic counterprotests only seem to be making things worse.
Regardless, if this is how major legislation is going to be "debated" from now on in the US, it can't be good for either policy or the public weal.
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posted 10-08-2009 10:55
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Ginge has doubtless read today's FT. For those who haven't:
The sleepy town of Chatham in the rural county of Pittsylvania, Virginia, is not the obvious site for a pitchfork revolution. Nor do the town's septuagenarians seem like an obvious vanguard. But after two tense hours of grilling by elderly people on healthcare reform at a "town hall" meeting, Tom Perriello, the 34-year-old Democratic congressman for the district, could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Two of Mr Perriello's questioners accuse him of supporting a bill that would sponsor euthanasia. "This whole approach [to reform healthcare] is inhumane and unlike anything I have seen in my 63 years," said a Vietnam veteran.
Mr Perriello points out that the bill would reimburse doctors for counselling on "end of life" issues and "living wills" - something they now do free. "Euthanasia is illegal and anyone who is telling seniors we are going to pull the plug on them is not telling the truth," he says.
His words do not appear to have a soothing effect. Like many of his colleagues, Mr Perriello is foregoing his holiday this summer to make the case for healthcare reform - a $1,000bn (€702bn, £598bn) 10-year process aimed at bringing America's 50m uninsured in from the cold while reducing the country's explosive healthcare costs. The stakes are huge, not just for the US economy, almost a fifth of which is eaten up by healthcare spending, but also for the career prospects of people such as Mr Perriello, who faces re-election next year.
A freshman lawmaker, who won his traditionally Republican district by a wafer-thin margin of 727 votes last November, Mr Perriello is holding a town hall event virtually every night this month during the recess. Conservative radicals follow him around, booing at intervals and recording the proceedings on a camcorder. At some events, such as one earlier this week for Frank Kratovil, a freshman lawmaker in Maryland, things can get out of hand. Protesters there hung an effigy of the congressman outside the meeting.
Mr Perriello is careful never to show disrespect to the people who show up. "A lot of my time I spend just countering disinformation about the healthcare reforms," he says.
"Some people think we're planning a socialist revolution. Most of it comes from rightwing corporate and religious groups. But it plays into very genuine fears among seniors, which I understand."
Although the 1,427-page House of Representatives bill is complex, no one has yet found clauses saying that "illegal immigrants will be provided the best American healthcare for free", or "Americans with private health plans will be forced into rationing" - as questioners insist is the case. But the most recurring fear is over euthanasia.
Hour after hour, Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host, makes such assertions to a daily audience that can reach 20m. Others get their views from Christian magazines, such as World Magazine, which promises "Today's news. Christian views".
Suzanne Brown, who runs a café and ice cream parlour in Chatham, heard about the euthanasia issue in an e-mail from the ministry of Rick Joyner, who runs a "mega church" in Fort Mill, South Carolina. "No, I do not support healthcare reform," she says. "I don't want bureaucrats choosing when I am going to die."
Down the road at the All State Insurance office, Rick Thompson is also bitterly opposed to the reforms. This is in spite of private insurers having denied Mr Thompson coverage because he has a "pre-existing condition" - he recently had an operation to staple his stomach together and has since lost 120lb. Under the reforms, insurers who participated in the proposed national exchange would be prohibited from denying anyone coverage.
"If they want to change the system they should propose tort reform," Mr Thompson says, in reference to the cost of lawsuits against doctors, who then pass on the high costs of malpractice insurance to consumers. "That is one reform Barack Obama isn't proposing." Mr Thompson is right. Such lawyers are among the largest donors to the Democratic party.
Whether Mr Obama can succeed in pushing through a big health reform bill when Congress returns depends very much on how lawmakers such as Mr Perriello fare in this intensely political recess. Grassroots America is talking of little else. "People have a lot of fears," says Mr Perriello. "Not all of them are well-founded."
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posted 10-08-2009 10:58
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I hadn't actually read that article. It sounds relatively tame compared to some of the meetings I've seen footage of.
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posted 10-08-2009 12:25
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From Steven Pearlstein's op-ed on healthcare a couple of days back:Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done
This is what I'm afraid of: that America is failing that test, and that it will set a terrible precedent for all the other enormous challenges facing the country in the next few years. If a government with total Democratic control can't pass a pathetically moderate healthcare bill, what hope is there for, say, climate change legislation or a serious rethink of the executive's wartime powers? If the Republicans can demagogue significant numbers of people into believing that the government is going to kill off everyone over 70, how on earth can you have anything approaching a rational public policy debate?
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posted 10-08-2009 12:30
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Profoundly depressing, all this. Makes you suspect that were any kind of vaguely socialist government ever elected in the US it would be toppled before it ever got the chance to do anything.
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posted 10-08-2009 12:38
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When you've got an old guy standing up in a town hall and shouting, "I don't want the government messing with my Medicare!!" to the proverbial raucous cheers of approval, you know you've got an uphill fight ahead of you.
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posted 10-08-2009 12:40
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Ginger Yellow wrote:
This is what I'm afraid of: that America is failing that test, and that it will set a terrible precedent for all the other enormous challenges facing the country in the next few years. If a government with total Democratic control can't pass a pathetically moderate healthcare bill, what hope is there for, say, climate change legislation or a serious rethink of the executive's wartime powers? If the Republicans can demagogue significant numbers of people into believing that the government is going to kill off everyone over 70, how on earth can you have anything approaching a rational public policy debate?
Here, GY.
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posted 10-08-2009 12:40
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So where is the left (yeah I know, such as it is, and all that) on this?
There was a lot of talk about people having been galvanised by the Obama campaign. This seems an ideal opportunity to try to bring those people together on an issue.
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posted 10-08-2009 12:43
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It makes me wish for a euthanasia clause added in the bill, it really does.
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posted 10-08-2009 12:52
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TonTon, part of the problem is that there's no single bill for "the left" to get behind. Another part of it is that many of the things the left would like to see in any bill aren't really being pushed for. There's also the typical American situation whereby perfectly innocuous proposals like funding for comparative effectiveness research is treated by the right and the media like it's the end fo the world. That said, however, various left-leaning organisations are spending plenty of money on ads and doing some ground level organising and so on. But ultimately, what can "the left" do about people who turn up to meetings and start screaming about socialism and the holocaust?
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Last Edit: 10-08-2009 12:53 By Ginger Yellow.
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posted 10-08-2009 12:55
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Ground-level organising is what I was thinking of - getting people to these meetings maybe.
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posted 10-08-2009 13:03
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They've started doing that - perhaps a bit belatedly - with the SEIU seeming to be at the forefront. But two groups of protestors shouting at each other isn't the most productive way to go about shaping policy. And recently it seems to be leading to violent confrontations, which can't be good.
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posted 10-08-2009 13:09
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When you've got an old guy standing up in a town hall and shouting, "I don't want the government messing with my Medicare!!" to the proverbial raucous cheers of approval, you know you've got an uphill fight ahead of you.
www.stopmedicare.org/
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posted 10-08-2009 13:12
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Steve Benen has a useful breakdown of the opposition.
Also, this.
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posted 10-08-2009 13:17
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I wouldn't have thought having a stand-up slanging match would be necessarily the most useful tactic. Meetings require preparation, and the mood of a meeting makes a big difference to whether a heckler is listened to or laughed off.
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posted 10-08-2009 13:20
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When they don't care about being listened to, and are just prepared to shout everything down that they disagree with, that's kinda moot.
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posted 10-08-2009 13:39
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Great link, Toro.
There is no more telling a moment than the guy who shouted out in rage at a townhall:
Keep your government hands off my Medicare!
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Last Edit: 10-08-2009 13:39 By The Exploding Polnik.
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posted 10-08-2009 13:40
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Toro: Count On It wrote:
When you've got an old guy standing up in a town hall and shouting, "I don't want the government messing with my Medicare!!" to the proverbial raucous cheers of approval, you know you've got an uphill fight ahead of you.
www.stopmedicare.org/
hahaha
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posted 10-08-2009 14:40
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I wouldn't have thought having a stand-up slanging match would be necessarily the most useful tactic. Meetings require preparation, and the mood of a meeting makes a big difference to whether a heckler is listened to or laughed off.
As stated by other posters above, Republicans and/or misinformed people are coming to these meetings in large numbers with the express purpose of shouting down the speakers, usually with completely fabricated and demagogic talking points. There's not a whole lot you can do, besides ejecting them, which just enables them to go on about being repressed.
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posted 10-08-2009 14:57
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Ah well, may as well give up then.
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