"The Health Reform Bill is the Flashpoint"

What have we learned over the course of the past two weeks about support for health care reform?

Senator Arlen Specter, who endured five town hall meetings during that time, offered one perspective.  "America is very angry at the moment, more angry than at any time in the past 75 years," he said after the Lewisburg event.  About what?  The weak economy and unemployment topped Specter's list, followed by the spike in federal deficit spending and the interminable partisan bickering in Washington.

But isn’t all this passion about health care?  "The health reform bill is the flashpoint," said Specter.

Based on what I heard at town hall meetings in York, Lewisburg and State College, the Senator’s analysis is on target.  Speaker after speaker rose to oppose the health reform bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives but then veered off into complaints about the economic stimulus package, the expanded government role in Wall Street and automobile manufacturing, and members of Congress who voted in a rush for bills they hadn’t read. 

Speakers did not complain about Medicare or CHIP and no one suggested these publicly-funded programs be eliminated.  Surprisingly little was said about health policy itself, other than that government should stay out of it. 

Many attending the town hall meetings seemed to use the debate over health reform as an opportunity to articulate pent-up anxieties about a government that has violated their trust.  Perhaps the best illustration of this was the man at the State College town hall who began his comments by describing his family’s health care crisis.  Within a very short period of time, the man lost his job, the family lost its health insurance coverage, and the wife was diagnosed with a life-threatening heart ailment requiring a transplant. "We didn't have a pot to pee in," he said.  "We did the only thing left - we turned to God in prayer."

As the crowd cheered, the man went on to describe how God answered his prayers:  the Veterans Administration approved his application for a disability pension and the state of Pennsylvania paid for his wife's heart transplant.  Then he got to the point of his remarks:  the government should stay out of health care.

How should such contradictory sentiments be understood?  As opposition to health care reform?  I think not.  Instead, it means many still are reeling from the economic and political shocks of the past 12 months, beginning with the collapse of Wall Street last September.  It means our disequilibrium has left us vulnerable to the distortions of opportunists who see our anxiety as their chance to grab political power.  It means that before engaging in a reasoned debate about health care policy, some of us need to get some things off our chest.

Earlier this month, at the York town hall on health care, participants reflected the same surly mood Specter encountered in his meetings.  The York meeting was led by two state legislators who provided ample opportunity for people to vent but who also carefully explained how doing nothing is a costly choice, both in money spent and opportunity lost.  At the end of the meeting, they asked participants to indicate a preference among four choices: stand pat, reform private health insurance but leave it at that, reform private health insurance and add a public option, or scrap what we have now and adopt a single-payer approach.  An overwhelming majority (70 percent) wanted a change from the status quo with the largest portion of those supporting an approach similar to what currently is pending in Congress.

Granted, York was just one town hall meeting.  But it illustrates an important point:  people do understand it’s time to make important decisions about our health care system.  They may be mad as hell that after all we’ve been through in recent months, we now must deal with this too.  But if our leaders show the courage to listen respectfully to the anger, and it they have the patience to help us get the facts straight, we can reach the point of dealing with yet another change. 

In our quieter moments, we know we must.