At Conestoga Valley High School, on the evening of August 27, about 500 local citizens gathered for a town hall discussion with District Congressman Joe Pitts. The topic for the evening: HR 3200—the health care reform bill that has lately held center stage in Congressional deliberation and national debate. The Thursday evening meeting, in its peak attendance, nearly filled the 800-seat auditorium, but, even in its most contentious moments, did not reach the level of ferocity encountered by Democratic Senator Arlen Spector in his August 11 town hall in Lebanon, PA.
Pitts began the meeting with a thirty minute speech to establish his rationale in opposing the bill. Early on, he brandished his own personal copy of the document, heavily marked and dog-eared, to use as a visual aid in describing the amount of money at stake in HR 3200: “This bill is 1,017 pages long…that page right there [will] cost you $2 billion.”
The congressman contended that the creation of a cheap, non-taxable public health insurance plan would steadily erode competition from private providers. He cited one recent study that projected 114 million Americans being “dumped” from their existing insurance plans if a cheaper public option were introduced to their employers: “And that,” Pitts asserted, “Is our fear—that the public plan will be the first step down the slippery slope toward single-payer national healthcare. And we do not want that in the United States of America.”
Pitts argued that, due to a lack of statutory limits in the terms of the bill, a proposed Health Benefits Advisory Commission would be empowered to, in Pitts’ words, “tell you what the minimum health care plan must be in every insurance plan—public and private—in America. And so, if they say…that basic health care…includes abortion coverage, then abortion will be mandated in every insurance plan—public and private—in America.”
Pitts said that he and his colleagues had offered an amendment for more specific statutory limits; however, Pitts said, the amendment was defeated: “If [abortion] is not covered, why wouldn’t they want the amendment? All we said was, ‘you can’t use taxpayer funds for subsidizing abortion.’”
Later, Pitts encountered some brief outbursts from opponents in the audience when he attempted to cite alleged failures of single-payer or universal health care systems in Canada and Europe. While he spoke, several members of the crowd persistently argued against Pitts’ assertions and shouted, “that’s not true.” Finally, the congressman paused and stated, “I can go on and on with these statistics, but it doesn’t sound like you want to hear them”—to which the audience burst into a sharp applause, ambiguous in its allegiance.
When the floor was opened to public questions and comments, supporters of the bill showed a surprisingly strong presence. A least half of the speakers were at odds with Pitts’ position.
One man, whose wife is a doctor at Lancaster General, argued that unified, national health coverage would produce the same efficiencies and savings that one finds when purchasing groceries in bulk. Another man, who owns an international travel company and has experienced many foreign health care systems, observed that America’s health care infrastructure “has great technology, but is a very poor system.” One woman, who works as a nurse, stressed the human element of these considerations: “We are talking about human beings who need to be cared for.”
Those opposing the bill also strongly voiced their concerns. One man decried what he sees as an inappropriate exercise of Executive power in the Obama administration. Another man, who used to sell Medicare supplement insurance, argued that, with $500 billion to be removed from Medicare under the bill, seniors will have to spend more on additional insurance to remain safely covered. The final speaker was a man who asserted that the proposed system is simply unconstitutional: “Any and all mandated health care is not an enumerated power for anyone in the government.” The man’s protest brought a large portion of the crowd to their feet in applause.
“One man decried what he sees as an inappropriate exercise of Executive power in the Obama administration.”
These are the kind of people I love. Obama has a long way to go to even come close to the “inappropriate exercise of Executive power” that was rampant during the previous administration. Where was he then?