Lois Herr, the Democrat who will be vying for Joe Pitts congressional seat in 2010, hosted her first town hall meeting on healthcare reform at the Duke Street Library on Saturday. The meeting, Herr said, was scheduled after Pitts held a much-criticized telephone town hall with his constituents in the 16th District of Pennsylvania last month. Since that time, Pitts held a series of traditional town halls, including one at Conestoga Valley High School. Herr asserted that she intended her gathering to focus on the comments and questions of the public, as opposed to Pitts’ CV meeting, which she described as a “lecture.”
Although Herr presently holds no sway over the healthcare bills being debated in Washington, she stated that the meeting would serve to connect her with the desires of her constituents, should she enter office in 2011. The meeting, which drew over 60 local residents, also represented a subtle opportunity for Herr to begin campaigning for next year’s election.
In her opening remarks, Herr acknowledged that the health care industry accounts for one seventh of the US economy, and for this reason, she said, the issue of health reform is surrounded with considerable “heat.” But proceeded to set aside economic concerns, and recognize the fundamental human element of health care: “We’re talking about people’s lives. We’re talking about their well-being. We’re talking about how they’re treated when they’re ill….Those are the kinds of things that truly motivate me.”
Herr briefly established what she considered the most crucial goals of health care reform, which included the following:
• Universal coverage
• Portable plans
• No limits for pre-existing conditions
• Mental, dental, and preventative care
• Reduces costs
• Protects Medicare
• Encourages primary care
When the floor was opened to comments and questions from the public, all of the speakers sided with the Democratic health care proposals, many of them decrying the system as it currently operates.
One woman explained how she recently received a letter from Lancaster General urging her to come for an important test. However, she said, the majority of this letter consisted of instructions to contact her insurance provider. “I’m sure tired of hearing that healthcare reform means putting somebody between you and your doctor,” She complained, “Oh, please! There is a team of people between me and my doctor, even when they want to work with me.”
One man from eastern Lancaster County took a shot at a proposal from Joe Pitts to improve health insurance by allowing Americans to purchase plans from out of state: “How would you implement that type of system, with different insurance laws in every state in the country…?” Herr asserted that such proposals simply exist to support anti-reform rhetoric. “There’s no intention of implementing it,” She said, “It’s just thrown out there as an argument against something. And it’s not well thought through, and it’s not workable, and it’s not going to solve the problem.”
One Lancaster woman recommended the use of price controls to regulate the healthcare industry. Japan, she noted, has an entirely privatized healthcare system, but uses price controls to keep service affordable and available. The woman said that her granddaughter, who lives in Japan, received top-notch care for appendicitis, including an operation and five days of inpatient care, but was billed a mere $1,000.
Herr said that Japan exemplifies the benefit of “more heavy regulation of the insurance industry, which would involve, not just what they can cover, but what they can charge.” Herr also asserted that competition from a public insurance option would optimize the effect of regulation by showing the private sector how “it can be done at a lower price.”
One man recounted his personal experience with the American healthcare system. The man said that he spent ten years without health insurance due to unemployment and the inability to afford premiums and co-pays. Once he found a job that provided health coverage, the man was crushed to find that most of his longstanding ailments would not qualify for care, being excluded as “pre-existing conditions.”
Herr concluded the meeting by emphasizing that America’s current healthcare dilemma is rooted in both economic and humanitarian issues. She noted that while American health is statistically worse than that of Great Britain, America spends more than 2.5 times as much money on health care. “We want people to be healthy, and we want the economy to be well,” Herr stated, “But when we’re spending this much money and not getting our money’s worth, then we have a basic economic problem to fix.”
