Arlen Specter's Town Hall Meeting (full recap)

Loren just posted an excellent (and concise) summary of today’s Town Hall Meeting with Arlen Specter in Lewisburg (see the next post below). For those who weren’t able to go (or couldn’t get a seat), I figured I would post a more detailed recap. I realize this is going to be a really long post, so in case you don’t want to read this whole recap, I would just read Loren’s previous post, or just these 7 key points:

1. Specter said he shared Obama’s view that we need to reform healthcare to control rising costs.
2. He said he would not sign a healthcare bill that would add to the deficit.
3. He said, in reference to single payer, that “nothing should be off the table.”
4. He said that he thought the public option was “a good option.”
5. He repeatedly talked about preventative care, and medical tests, and implied that having people get annual exams, etc. would help to reduce costs and keep people from getting sick.
6. He repeatedly ducked other questions about healthcare by saying “the House bill is not law yet, and there is no Senate bill yet.” I understand he’s a Senator and so he doesn’t have to vote on the House bill, but he still could have actually addressed people’s questions (and sometimes their completely mythical Sarah Palin-esque delusions) about the House bill instead of just sidestepping them.
7. On the topic of Employee Free Choice Act, he said that he believed we should “maintain the secret ballot” (i.e., he’s not supporting EFCA).
   
   And now, let the full recapping begin!
   

The Crowd: As expected, it was a full house and there were a lot of Republicans who, as far as I could tell, really enjoy saying the word, “boo!” a lot. And shouting every time they hear something they don’t like. This happened a lot, because: (a) there were plenty of Democrats in attendance, (b) Specter said a lot of things they didn’t like, and (c) apparently, there are a LOT of things they don’t like.... What DO they like? Um, “tort reform!” But we’ll get to that later.

The Format: 30 people asked questions. There was no “lining up at the microphones”; instead, 30 people were issued numbers as they entered (like at a deli counter). Nobody I talked to (including the ones who got the numbers) seemed to know how they picked who got the numbers, but there was at least somewhat of a mix of people with different views, so I don’t think there was any conspiracy going on.

Specter’s Opening Statement: He said he’d been doing these townhalls for “decades,” that he knew we were going through difficult times with the economy, and that there was a lot of anger about “what’s going on in D.C.” He mentioned several important issues, ending with healthcare, reminding the audience that there is a House bill that’s been through 5 committees so far but no Senate bill yet. He talked about the need for more preventative medicine as a way to keeping people healthier and reducing medical costs, and made an awkward word choice when he said he’d like to see women “catch” breast cancer at an early age.” (I think he meant “detect.”)

The Questions: (The 17 Red questions were from conservatives, the 6 Blue questions were from liberals/progressives, and the 7 Black questions were from people who seemed basically neutral.)
Question #1: How does U.S. healthcare compare to other countries? And what is the prognosis for our system if we don’t reform?
Specter said we compare “very favorably” to other countries [whaaat--?], suggesting that we have lots of technology and have good cancer survival rates in a few cases. He said the “prognosis” is that costs will get out of control if we don’t reform. People need to change their lifestyles, and get earlier tests, etc., etc.

Question #2: A prospective medical student complained that she might not get into med school because schools were being encouraged (through federal funding incentives) to admit more underrepresented minorities. Also, the schools were being pressured to enroll doctors who would go work in underserved areas [implying that she was not a minority, and did not want to work in an underserved area]. She asked why government was allowed to control medical schools.
Specter basically said that these things shouldn’t be “controlled” by government, but they should certainly be considered and encouraged, particularly sending doctors to underserved areas (like Scranton!).

Question #3: A woman was concerned that healthcare bill was being “pushed through” too fast, and told Specter that the “two ways” to control costs were to enact tort reform and to “let the insurance companies offer different plans that cover different things.” (???)
He agreed with the first point and bragged that the Senate had “slowed things down.” He said that Obama wanted it passed in July, and didn’t get that, but that Obama understands how the Senate works since he used to be a Senator. [This got a really strange outburst of booing, which Specter actually commented on, because it wasn’t clear why he would get booed for saying Obama used to be a Senator. One person yelled, “We didn’t vote for him!” which seemed like a non-sequitir.] He said that torts have improved, but there hasn’t been a bill because there hasn’t been any big push for it. He repeated again that if everyone had an annual medical exam, costs would go down.

Question #4: A doctor who used to live in Canada told a long, rambling story and then asked where the money for healthcare reform would come from. Also, claimed that “page 16” of the House bill said it would “funnel everyone into a public system.”
Specter repeated his standard lines about how he would not vote for a bill that increased the deficit, and that no Senate bill had been decided on yet.

Question #5: A woman with a T-shirt showing a donkey kicking a map of the U.S., and with many pre-existing conditions including lupus, claimed that “section 123” of the House bill said that “a government bureaucrat with better insurance than what she has” would get to decide whether she lived or died, and her question was who would take care of her kids when she was dead.
[This was one of Specter’s better answers.] He jumped on her comment about “the bureaucrat with better health insurance” to say that the whole point of what they were trying to do was to get her “the same health insurance that I have.” He talked about how Senators get to choose from a slate of health plans and that everyone should have that choice.

Question #6: A woman said she was concerned that the administration had not yet “gone through and cut things out of the budget” [not strictly true, but ok] and they were spending too much new money, like in the “Cash For Clunkers” program, and that Obama had hired too many “czars” that we were paying for. Her question was, why doesn’t Congress do something about him?
Specter said that Congress did have some control, because he couldn’t spend any m money without them appropriating it. He promised to “count how many czars” Obama had and get back to her on that.

Question #7: A woman asked if he would support a renewable energy bill, and strengthen renewable energy.
He said he was all in favor of renewable energy, and that the stimulus bill he voted for included $80 billion to develop renewable energy sources.

Question #8: The owner of the Pineapple Inn opened with a quote from Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda minister) as a way of comparing the current administration to Nazi Germany. Eventually, he asked when the government was going to cut their spending.
Specter said he supported the Balanced Budget Amendment, and that Obama has pledged that healthcare reform will pay for itself and not add to the deficit. He then rambled a little bit about other ways the government could save money.

Question #9: A student said that cancer ran in his family, and that he was worried about his family members “waiting in line” too long for cancer treatments, and that the government, not doctors, would decide who lived or died.
Specter said that doctors should decide if you need treatment and that NO ONE should decide whether you live or die. [I wish he would have pointed out that currently, insurance companies do make that decision for some people.] He then rambled a little bit about “what he wanted” was better treatments to save lives, and how the NIH (“the crown jewel of our government, maybe the only one”) was responsible for so many of our current treatments.

Question #10: A woman clutching a copy of a book on Jefferson said she was “scared” that we were “losing our freedoms” and that healthcare reform wasn’t about healthcare at all but just a way to lead us all down the path toward socialism.
Specter said his whole career, he has fought for constitutional freedoms: he fought to oppose warrantless wiretapping [which got booed with shouts of “warrants take too long!” which seemed hilarious to me at first, and then disturbing], and to protect the right to counsel.

Question #11: A woman who had obviously been watching a lot of Fox News said that the healthcare bill “scared her,” that it would let the government withdraw money from people’s bank accounts, and that there would be “end of life planning.”
Specter frustratingly declined to debunk any of this nonsense and instead just reiterated that “no one should make life or death decisions for you.”

Question #12: A man claimed to be reading from some section of the House healthcare bill, said it would increase debt, and asked where the money would come from.
Specter gave his standard answer about how the man was quoting the House bill, and that it wasn’t a law yet.

Question #13: A young man (with a backwards baseball cap) said that the government had “failed” at so many things, like the Cash For Clunkers program (???) and that he didn’t want to have to tell his children that he stood by and let the country go into debt.
Specter took issue with the assertion that the government “failed” at everything, there was some back-and-forth argument about Cash For Clunkers, and I got bored and stopped taking notes.

Question #14: A young woman said she appreciated that Specter (in Question #11) had said he was against “health panels” making decisions for people and against the government transferring money out of people’s bank accounts. She asked him to clarify whether he wanted to “require” people to have annual health exams, because she didn’t think Amish people should have to. [To be fair, this was actually a more reasonable question than I’m making it sound here.]
Specter said no, they shouldn’t be required, but we should encourage people to get annual exams. This got a lot of applause from the non-conservatives in the audience, which seemed to temporarily confuse the conservatives.

Question #15: A man asked whether Specter supported the Employee Free Choice Act.
Specter said he thought they should maintain the secret ballot (so, in other words, no). He said something wonky about a second provision on arbitration (and the “last best offer” approach) that I didn’t understand.

Question #16: A young man complained about the deficit, all the bailouts, TARP, and how Obama had promised not to hire lobbyists but the assistant treasury secretary was a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs). [This is actually a good point that bugs me, too.] He asked why “[his] generation” should have to pay for what’s going on.
Specter pointed out that TARP and some of the other bailouts were under President Bush (which prompted a lot of confused, angry booing and the sound of heads exploding). He repeated his line about how he wouldn’t vote for a healthcare bill that added to the deficit.

Question #17: A young man with a libertarian T-shirt asked Specter if he supported Bernie Sanders (I-VT)’s bill to start auditing the Federal Reserve. [I completely agree with this.]
Specter said yes, that government agencies should always be accountable.

Question #18: A woman said she worried that the healthcare bill was being “pushed through” too quickly. She then made a bizarre logical claim that she had read the House bill, and that it didn’t say anything about abortion, and therefore it must be saying that abortions are “okay.”
Specter repeated his bragging that the Senate had “slowed the bill down.” To the second point, he said he realized that some people didn’t want their money going to fund abortions, and so there was a proposal to let people choose whether they wanted a health plan that paid for abortions vs. one that didn’t.

Question #19: A man claimed that the House bill said that illegal immigrants would get healthcare, and that they would be counted in the census (“to give them benefits!”).
Specter said, no, he wouldn’t support covering illegal immigrants.

Question #20: A man said he was “sick of you people in Washington” and wanted to know where our border fence was.
Specter said they had appropriated money for a 750(?)-mile border fence, and that it was under construction. [This prompted one shout from a man who said “it was supposed to be 92,008 miles long!” which made me question his grasp of geography.]

Question #21: A cardiologist from Geisinger told a story about a 47-year old man he’d just treated who had gotten insurance through his wife, until she lost her job, and then needed a catheterization and bypass surgery without insurance. [Unfortunately he went on a little long and got lots of people shouting out for him to get to the question.] He asked Specter to support universal health insurance, and also (referring to Question #2) sending more doctors to underserved areas.
Specter said unequivocally (!) that he supported universal health insurance, and that he also agreed we needed to send more doctors to underserved areas.

Question #22: A man said he was concerned about global warming [which brought lots of rude shouting, including people saying “no such thing!”], and asked Specter if he supported a cap on carbon emissions.
Specter said he will support a carbon cap bill, that they just needed to work on how it would be paid for.

Question #23: A man said that the deficit was a concern, but that the one place where we could afford to cut spending was the military, and that we had spent $3-5 trillion on an unjustified war in Iraq. [This prompted the worst cacophony of booing of the afternoon; at one point, some people started chanting, “Support our troops!” but luckily it didn’t really catch on.] He asked Specter when Congress would realize that we could stop wasting money by ending the Iraq War.
Specter gave a textbook answer about how “if we had known Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, we’d never have gone in,” that we were on our way out now, and that Iraqis were ready to stand up for themselves. [Gee, we’ve never heard that before.] He said we need to be “very cautious” about cutting military spending because “we still live in a dangerous world” with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc., etc. Overall, this was a very disappointing Republican answer.

Question #24: A woman said she was a nurse, and a Christian, and against abortion. She said she worried the healthcare bill “removed the conscience clause, and allowed partial birth abortion.” She challenged Specter to define the conscience clause, and partial birth abortion, and state his position on them.
Specter correctly defined both things, then said he had voted against partial birth abortion in the past.

Question #25: A man said he was all in favor of solar and wind energy, but where did Specter stand on nuclear energy? [This prompted lots of “yeahs” from conservatives who apparently love nuclear power now. I’m just guessing that they probably love it more when it’s in someone else’s backyard than theirs...]
He said he supported it, that “the days of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were over” and that it was safe. (This reminded me a lot of Alan Alda in the last season of The West Wing....)

Question #26: One of our CSCC members, LK, asked Specter whether he had heard any Christian groups expressing concern for the suffering of poor people who can’t get access to healthcare.
Specter said yes he had. [Unfortunately, I think this was intended to be a 2-part question, but the senator moved on before we got to hear the second part.]

Question #27: A man asked a confusing question about whether the public option would be “like Medicare and Medicaid.” [It wasn’t clear whether he wanted them to be alike, or not.]
Specter said he hoped they’d be “better” than Medicare. [Great Republican pandering there, Arlen.] There was some confusing back-and-forth with the questioner, but eventually he said the public option would be “like a private entity,” but public, and not run for profit.

Question #28: The executive director of the Susquehanna Valley Community Education Council (I think I have that right) asked Specter whether he supported the current initiatives to start more community colleges in Pennsylvania.
Specter didn’t answer directly, but said that he supported community colleges (in general) and had backed them in the past.

Question #29: One of our CSCC members, NC, told a story about a friend who had lost her job, applied for private insurance through Geisinger, went for the physical exam they required, and was told she was uninsurable because she was obese. [This was a great story, because it drew gasps and confused the conservatives who didn’t want “the government” telling them how to live, but suddenly were faced with an example of an insurance company telling someone they were too fat. I think I heard some heads exploding in the back...] She then asked Specter if he could name “the top 3 myths” about healthcare being perpetuated on the radio and TV, and tell us the truth about them.
Specter said that under healthcare reform, her friend would be able to get health insurance. He ignored (or forgot about) the question part of the question.

Question #30: A man said he was an army veteran [which got a standing ovation]. He wanted to know if Specter would “put in for” a bill that would basically give him free healthcare. He complained that he “went to the doctor the other day and had to pay $50 for a test.” He also asked Specter, “did you read the [healthcare] bill?”
Specter said he was a veteran too, told a story about WWI veterans, and said he’s always supported broader coverage for veterans. He talked about how he had meetings coming up in the next few weeks with Gen. Shinsheki and Secretary Sebelius [whose name prompted a lot of booing and shouting] to work on improving the VA hospitals.

And then, just like that, he was gone....

Closing Thoughts: While the conservatives probably outnumbered the non-conservatives in the audience, it was gratifying that, whenever one of them shouted something out (which happened a LOT), they got shushed by the people sitting around them (some of whom, I suspect were conservatives themselves). Although a lot of people were yelling, to any moderate person sitting in the audience, I can only hope that they came off as rude and not particularly sympathetic. I was also gratified to see Specter generally poking fun at the shouters, and he seemed genuinely pleased when the Democrats in the audience would applaud him for something.
I was just constantly amazed by the cognitive dissonance on display. I wanted to ask these people—who were suddenly SO concerned about the deficit—where they’d been for the last 8 years when Bush was cutting taxes and sending us to war at the same time. I wanted to tell the veteran who was asking for free healthcare for himself that we all just wanted what he wanted. I wanted to tell the people who kept yelling at Specter, “Read the Bill!” that maybe they should read the bill and not a Fox News blog’s summary of it. Most of all, I just wanted to tell people not to be so scared. Because I think that’s what people truly are—partly scared of the black man in the White House, but partly just scared by the horror stories pounded into their brains by the right-wing media (and sometimes the rest of the media, too). I really wish there was something CSCC could do, not just to reach out to each other, but to help these people to not be so scared of government, of Obama, and of us “liberal Democrats.” To help them see that we want many of the things they want. To help them realize that Fox News and talk radio are not “news,” that they have an agenda, and that they are basically hoodwinking them into yelling at other citizens in an attempt to protect the interests of the type of people who own Fox News and radio stations. I think it’s part of our mission not to give up on these people.