I went to my first health care town hall meeting and had a great time. Congressman Lamar Smith (TX 21) is a man that gets it. He answers questions, he knows about most of the issues, and if he doesn’t know he tells you instead of trying to b.s. you. He is also using technology. Go to his site, scroll down and choose the social media of your choice.
I arrived too late to sit in the main hall, the backup room had a poor sound system so I couldn’t hear much. I spent most of my time outside talking to the dozen or so liberal supporters of the health care plan that held signs outside. I remained calm and professional, and ultimately ended up reaffirming my opinion that liberals, while well-intended, simply don’t think things through. They get all caught up in their emotions and just can’t provide a rational argument for how America will pay for the proposed system. Here are some of the responses I got:
- We are already in debt, this is too important to ignore.
- If we reduce profit of insurance companies (and other big companies) we can use that money to pay for it.
- George Bush spent a lot on that stupid war, this is a much better use of our money.
- We have to give people insurance, it falls under the “pursuit of happiness” concept.
- Public education is not a right, but we provide that for everyone, why not health care?
- Insurance companies already make life decisions, why not let the government do the same? We need more choices.
I could go on, but the main point is that nobody addresses the “how” part of the problem. HOW would this be paid for? We could take the top 5% of tax payers at 100%, and we still wouldn’t be able to pay for this system. Now, for the other side of the coin, here are the questions that I asked that couldn’t be answered:
- Why should we trust the government to run our health care if they can’t even make Medicare/Medicaid profitable? (the answer I got was that “its not supposed to be for profit. Wars aren’t for profit either.”) I countered by asking “at what point does America have to start paying its bill?” ::crickets::
- “Why are corporate profits bad, isn’t that part of the American Dream? And if they are why does the left ignore the profits of credit card companies, or Al Gore’s green companies?” ::more crickets::
- “Have you seen the CBO report that shows that the proposed legislation will possible net a total of 16 million new insured, not the supposed 47 million that Obama tells us it will cover?” At this point, one woman said she had not heard that report (imagine that), and one gentleman said we should double down to get everyone covered. Right.
I find it interesting that the only person I saw being disruptive was a man being very vocal when anyone dared to suggest that illegal aliens should not be covered. Any comment made about illegal aliens was met with shouts from this man. Everyone else that I saw were respectful and energetic, yet civil. Univision showed up outside to video tape the Obama supporters and they did their best to look like a group. One of the videos below shows the ratio of those for and against the bill. You be the judge.
Here are the first two videos that my wife shot (I’ve got two more to upload):
Update: All four videos now available.
