Despite some of the media news showing Town Hall meetings with frustrated "YELLING" citizens, the Walla Walla Town Hall was filled with well behaved people who were able to share their opinions and ask relevant question about the Health Care bill.
As I walked through the parking lot towards the Community College's Dietrich Dome, the location for the Town Hall meeting, I heard a group of demonstrators "huddling" in a final cheer of support for the Health Care bill and/or the "Public Option" as they were dispersing into the building for the meeting. This group had professionally printed signs, and don't recall seeing any of the hand made ones so I expect they were somewhat organized which is not a bad thing. I did not see at that time any demonstrators against the current health care bill or any signs against the bill, but as I said people were dispersing to attend the meeting.
Upon entering the Dome, I was half expecting to see the "Octagon Cage" that was in the middle of the basketball court the last time I was there for an Amateur MMA Fight to protect protect the congresswoman. There was no such cage, just a stage with a table and a podium for Mike Hewitt our state senate representative and the Congresswoman.
After introductions Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers spoke briefly on general perspectives of the direction of health care and the health care bill. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is a Republican and she did sign the pledge to not vote for the bill until she read it and the bill is available on the internet for 72 hours so that the citizens have a chance to see the bill also. As many Republicans, she shared her concerns for the current proposals in Health Care Bill with the primary concern being the "Public Option". As I understood, she knows we need "Reform", but feels the current proposed bill would give to much "control" to the government over our health choices, cost more than expected and that we would do better to fix areas of our current system.
Most of the time of the meeting was Q&A time for attendees to ask the Congresswoman questions about the bill and/or state personal feelings in favor or against the bill. Most of the questions or statements had good honest concerns or comments while a few seemed were worded in ways to try to trick the Congresswoman.
In my opinion, she provided informative answers the questions. She acknowledges that Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and TriCare are currently Government run "health care" programs, but they all have their weak points with Medicare and Medicaid being funding. She states that Medicare and Medicaid pay "below actual costs of services" to hospitals, clinics and doctors and for those programs to save money they just pay less. She states that in some areas it is more difficult to find providers to accept new patients with this coverage and they cannot financially afford to take on patients at a loss.
There was a question for a young lady in the "18 to 35 year old with no insurance" group that asked about her situation and said she would be willing to pay but could not afford private insurance. The Congresswoman stated that many of the current "Government Requirements" for Insurance providers required certain or minimum benefit options that don't allow the options for "less coverage" that would be more affordable. She said that would be something she would be interested in fixing with more "out of state insurance competition" and modified insurance regulation.
One question was "Do you", the congresswoman, "believe that health care was a 'Right'?". Her answer was to my understanding that, she believed everyone has a right to "affordable health care". She did not say public or free health care.
She was asked about the current VA, Tricare, Medicare and Medicaid services being nearly a "Single Payer" system and why would she support the current systems and not the "Public Option" with concerns of it being a "single payer". While I don't think she agreed with his assumptions she attempted to answer the question with the facts that these current government systems have their problems, if the "Public Option" was created with similar pay structures to health providers, these providers would have to reduce their costs by reducing services/equipment which would negatively effect current care practices.
There was a man whose wife was a cancer patient and stated it was not cheap and had many bills piling up from the cancer treatments, but he had many concerns that her treatment options and choices would be reduced under the proposed bill. The Congresswoman shared similar concerns and stated that the US had currently one of the highest Cancer Survival rates from other countries.
There was a question about the costs of Small Businesses providing health care and costing the business too much and the Public Option would allow small businesses a less costly choice (hope I summarized that properly). The Congresswoman agreed that small business have a hard time affording insurance costs for their employees, but said that the 8% penalty to businesses if they don't provide insurance would de-incentives business to provide insurance thus "forcing" more people into the public option. Then with more people on the "public option" (or whatever it becomes) health care providers would be paid sub par fees for services and again not make enough money to provide current levels of care.
These seemed to be the basis of most of the questions that I could recall and yes this is my own interpretations of the questions and answers. It was for the most part interesting, but not a lot of new information.
Posted on August 28, 2009 16:08 |
Northwest Interests
