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Here’s How One Union Community Took Back a Town Hall on Health Care |
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Here’s a firsthand account from Rosa Blumenfeld, an organizer for the North Shore (Mass.) Labor Council, on how an organized and well-briefed union presence can counter the tactics many health care reform opponents are using to disrupt congressional town hall meetings.
As we arrived at the Chelmsford Town Hall, there were already people lined up to get in. Some were wearing T-shirts with angry tea kettles on them and carrying signs saying things like, “Stop Socialized Medicine” and “Obamacare: It’s to Die For.” As we were warned, they spread out all over the room and constantly disrupted anyone, including Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.), who spoke out against their lies.
Our side had about a dozen people between the North Shore Labor Council and IUE-CWA Local 201 and another dozen from SEIU Local 615. There were many Obama supporters among the crowd of 200 inside the room, and the 200 more waiting to get in.
What worked were simple signs with large print slogans like “Real Health Insurance Reform Now,” and “Stop Insurance Company Greed.” During Tsongas’ opening remarks, we applauded forcefully and many in the room cheered. We even had folks countering the extremist amongst the crowd waiting outside.
One of the most effective points during the Q&A happened when one union woman stood up and said:
I think that everyone in this room can agree that we need to stop unnecessary death. My grandmother got sick and died from breast cancer because her insurance company refused to pay for her treatment. The system isn’t working. People are dying. We need this health insurance reform.
What we were not warned about was the incredible amount of tension that it would create both within the room and within ourselves. Even our most active members that attended were exhausted by the time it was over.
Two things became very clear during the course of this town hall event. First, if we hadn’t been there, they would have eaten the congresswoman alive. These people were constantly shouting and were not interested in discussion or debate. All they wanted was to disrupt things as much as possible. Because of our support, she stood her ground and answered the questions in a way that supported the public health insurance option.
Second, we have to keep our message on the insurance companies whose insatiable (and thus far unchecked) greed got us into this mess in the first place. We cannot focus on the Democrats who support a public option in health care reform or even President Obama. In our meetings with elected officials, it is entirely appropriate to thank them for their support and push them to be stronger advocates, if necessary. But in our public message to counter the extremists, we must keep the focus on corporate greed.
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The people at these meeting have been brain washed that the government will take over their health care system and make decisions at what care they will receive and that is socialism. If these people will look at the government system today, it is socialism. The government tells you if you can start a business, through the states of the federal government and it has been that way since the revolution. Today, the insurance industry has control over the public, i.e. cars, homes and health. The health insurance industry tell the public what procedures what you will receive and what medications that the industry will pay for and you have no chose. If it is not a profit chose for the industry you will not receive the procedure or the medication.
It is a time for a change to take control of the industry and provide for quality care for all. The Veteran Ad. provides quality care for many veteran’s without the assistance or the decision form the insurance industry. Wake up America, it is time for CHANGE.
I couldn’t agree more! The insurance companies actually have the sort of control their now complaining that prospectively, the government might have if we’re allowed to have a public health care system, which is, according to them, some sort of authoritarian control over our health care. The fact is right now, these insurance companies are telling doctors what to do in terms of procedures which may be performed, in terms of which medicines should be administered, in terms of which patients should be allowed to survive after they themselves, based on the advice of their doctors, decide that such procedures are needed, and which medicines are needed as prescriptions for various illnesses.
How can I not be outraged when I see how elderly people are being used like this! They are being lied to, left terrified that they will be denied medical care (or worse), subjecting them to intense anxiety.
This fear-mongering is irresponsible and morally reprehensible.
Yes, it’s near criminal. Our fellow citizens deserve their right to proper health care. An opportunist is someone who doesn’t understand the consequences of their actions; I believe this best describes what’s happened to our health care system since the politics of various special interest groups have been allowed to take precedence over actual care; there’s no accuse to allow this to continue.
Since David Axelrod wants money to post for health Care & paid disruptors to stop health care reform. No wonder these are the people who hate veterans and want euthanasia for all wheel chair bound people. No wonder my sister has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis as do 90000 other Gulf War veterans who have to fight for denied care providers and equipment. No wonder there is third world country medicine in the United States. Now you know the rest of the story.
There is third world healthcare in the USA because the Insurance companies and their buddies in the Republican Party and their talk show hosts have given us that crap. They allowed corporate America to do whatever it wanted, deregulated everything and told the poor and middle class(working class) to fend for itself. Just follow the money and check out the people and firms involved in pushing and organizing these people that are disrupting the town hall meetings. Just follow the money.
But is it only insurance companies? What about all the lawsuits brought by contingent fee lawyers who are bankrupting doctors and forcing them to run unnecessary tests?
An ob-gyn I know tried to practice after having children. Despite never being sued, her malpractice insurance was over $100k - so now this highly trained professional is not practicing medicine!
Everything should be on the table! Refusing to consider new laws capping malpractice awards, allowing drug reimportation and taxing gold-plated health insurance is a prescription for failed policy.
People are concerned and they should be. The health care plan does nothing other than create a new bureaucracy to tax job creators to provide health insurance to the uninsured. It does nothing to cut insurance costs, create jobs or encourage sensible medicine. Nothing in it makes anyone a responsible buyer of medical service.
I think progressives should carry aerosol cans of whipping cream into these events and if people start interrupting, warn them, and if they continue, squirt whipping cream in their face. They’ll at least shut up to wipe it off (it will get a bit sticky, too). Just sayin’ beats using a ball bat.
If we would actually push for socialized health insurance, maybe we’d get a good public-private mix as a compromise. Instead, labor advocates a private-public mix that still requires everyone to buy into the system, and as a result we’ll get an even worse system as a compromise.
Likewise, if we advocate for real socialism - worker control and ownership of the means of production, shared wealth, free education and health care, cooperative enterprises and production for the social good - then maybe we’d get a more humane system than the predator capitalism that has destroyed jobs, lives and livelihoods.
The people disrupting town hall meetings are being duped and lied to and they buy the lies and propaganda because there is no organized opposition from the left to counter the right wing populist BS with a more humane, egalitarian, progressive, leftist populism. We’ve been co-opted by the Democrat Party that is just as beholden to their paymasters from Big Pharma and the insurance industry as their Republican cohorts. The obstructionist Maximus Barfcuss is the biggest recipient of insurance company campaign cash, and he’s supposed to be our friend, a Democrat.
We need to push for HR 676 and a single payer system that saves administrative costs and provides real care. Otherwise we’ll get a phony reform that just lines the pockets of corporate CEOs at our expense.
This is a real grass roots reaction against a proposal which has not been well explained. The problem is that it is being sold as lowering health care costs and the deficit when it really is about raising taxes on job creators to fund health care for the uninsured. This just means fewer US jobs and more money to the health care industry.
Why is there no proposal on cheaper drugs? Why do we pay the most in the world for drugs? Why are big drug companies spending millions to support the D plan?
Why are there no caps on malpractice damages? The trial lawyers like the proposal as it encourages more lawsuits and higher health care costs. Why is this off the table? A ob gyn friend stopped practicing because she has to pay six figures in insurance, even though she has never been sued. How can we get Americans to understand that perfect outcomes in medicine are not guaranteed?
Why is there nothing in the proposal on responsiblity for Americans as health care consumers? Wouldn’t Americans be more responsible if they had to pay a small portion of each bill? Wouldn’t taxing gold plated plans help? Why do unions oppose this?
Why are opponents focusing on mythical provisions about government encouraged suicide and rationing? Some estimate that half of all cost is the last 30 days of life - often for unconscious patients by guilty family members. My cardiologist father in law this year performed expensive interventions on two patients who were over 90 with terminal Alzheimers - because guilty family members said keep them alive at any cost! Can’t our government encourage living wills hen getting or renewing a driver’s license or when voting?
The health care debate is polarized and not rational. Ridiculous extreme positions have been made by both sides. I would love to see politicians, union leaders and insurance company executives volunteer as hospital orderlies for a week and then come back and discuss the challenges and the options.
Unions, insurance and drug companies and even the politicians are not helping the debate - they are just taking positions. We need a consensus for action - just like entering a war.
The fact of the matter is that we don’t even know what the so-called “public option” plan entails. At least with H.R. 676 we know everyone would be covered, employed and unemployed!
We could have a single payer system if the politicians were not so greedy and continue accepting bribes… oops I meant contributions from the corporate vultures!
It’s high time we all understand that we do not have real democracy! How can 2-3% of the total population control the government, the economy, the news media, the school systems, the entertainment industry and even the churches? That doesn’t look like democracy to me. Think about it!
Instead of using the words “socialism” and “public option”, I suggest saying that access to basic health care should be a human right and not a commodity to be bought and sold. We will pay through premiums or taxes. We, all of the people, will and should pay. This could be financed in the same way we finance other “public safety services”.
I too think all things should be on the table. But tort reform won’t even be considered because of all the political and monetary support from the lawyer lobbies.
It will soon get worse as there are now thousands of unemployed lawyers - they have little to lose by bringing lawsuits on contingency fee. A former boss used to say that lawyers add nothing to the pie but they take a big slice of the pie others create. If we could take out the unnecessary costs of litigation, insurance paperwork, unnecessary testing, and encourage people to fill out living wills deciding what they want, - then health care costs will go down. We should also recognize doctors who develop innovative treatments which cure and save costly intrusive treatments (I have a personal stake on this one as I think my doctor wife has developed a treatment technique which will save thousands of patients expensive treatments and ultimately save the government hundreds of millions.
It’s really disturbing to have the Speaker of the House refer to every day Americans who voice opposition to the administration as “UnAmerican”. This sound like facism at its best.
I amm a highly decorated andf combat wounded Marine and I sweriously take offense at Nancy Pelosi labeling me and others like me as unAmerican. Union thugs beat people at a meeting in St. Louis (SEIU) for voicing opposition to a sham of a bill for health care reform but I suppose unuion thugs who have a century of history in corruption, graft, violence and brutality are real Americans. You Union thugs are frauds and a despicable part of a true democracy.
DR WCK - I seriously Doubt you are a combat veteran, highly decorated or not.. you didn’t fact check on the St. Louis incident & you didn’t spell check at all - so I don’t believe you are anything other than a disgruntled Tea Bagger with little education & even less common sense.
DR. Wick:
It would be offensive if Speaker Pelosi said that, but she did not. The media distorted her remarks.
The watchdog group Media Matters has the full story is here:
Media falsely claim Pelosi and Hoyer called health reform opponents “un-American”
http://mediamatters.org/research/200908110030?lid=1057207&rid=33062793
It is a sad day when semantics and fear mongering can turn around the most needed reforms in history. I received numerous e-mails from groups urging me to fight the “death bill” that the President was sponsoring. I actually did read the e-mails, and they sounded heart-wrenching and scary. I believe these people got my e-mail from people who know that I am getting close the Medicare age.
However, having worked for the SSA for nearly 31 years, and being very familiar with Medicare and most other insurances, I realized who was behind these scare tactics. Who has the most to lose if these reforms go through? Who will lose record profits? Who will lose MONEY? And folks, this is what it’s all about…MONEY.
If you made billions of bucks off employers, employees, and wanted the status quo to continue for posterity, how would you handle it? You would do what everyone else does. Advertise. Except that you don’t have to spend millions on a huge TV or radio campaign. You have your pit bulls get out there and scare the hell out of people with tactics worthy of Hitler’s Youth Corps. You have right wing radio hosts and columnists and everyone in your arsenal spout words like “government death bill”, or “Socialized medicine” or what have you, and let the snowball start rolling. Word of mouth is the strongest type of advertising.
And many folks are afraid to go support the issue because there have actually been death threats. People are terrified that someone will pepper their groups with bullets for standing up for what they believe the country needs. Hate and fear tactics take us back about 100 years in our history, when people were hanged or shot for being a different color. I tis a knee-jerk reaction to change. Change that is desperately needed to improve the lives of millions of uninsured Americans who don’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, and whose employers can’t afford the exorbitant costs of employers group health plans for 20 or 30 employees.
I know a great deal about what health insurance companies do, and how they actually control the health industry, driving costs up, and quality down. I have seen them refuse to pay for expensive medicine to keep an elderly person alive, simply because “it wasn’t cost effective”.
I watched as Prescription Drug coverage created in the private sector took over the prior free medicine programs where companies had to give a percentage of FREE meds to needy folks without coverage for RX, making it possible for all those big drug companies to charge the government huge amounts while the government took on the lion’s share of drug costs for the poor and elderly and disabled.
I believe firmly in free enterprise, but when free enterprise takes precedence over health care and the lives of millions, I call that extortion of the worst sort.
I think that one good step towards a more rational discussion would be a lot more civility. Please don’t refer to union “thugs” on this blog. I also wish that everyone could stop with the Nazi allusions.
The people who are being mobilized by the billionaire insurance company CEO’s to oppose real health care reform are misinformed and wrong, but let’s not call them “brownshirts.” Sometimes, they have been behaving very badly and let’s call them on that behavior without calling them names.
Those of us who support real health care reform - and that includes the 68,724,397 voters who elected President Obama - have reality on our side. If we descend into the drama that the insurance industry’s misinformed angry people are pouring out, we lose.
I suggest everyone go back and read Gary Shipiro’s e-mail, because he brings up so many good points that there is no need for me to revisit them here. Why aren’t all these things on the table!!!??? This is what people object to. It drives people crazy that this process has been so politicized, because certain things just seem to be off-limits for discussion. Again, it appears to be just politics.
And then the other thing that drives people crazy is this bill is so big, no one, not even the politicians, seems to have any clue as to what the details are. Okay, fine, things need to be changed. But don’t just shut others out because they have taken a strong stance against this particular version of “health care reform.” They feel like they have no other choice, as it seems the “cure” will be much worse than the illness. And they feel no one is listening and it is being railroaded into passage.
When we’re talking about adding over $1,000,000,000,000 in new federal government expense (and when has govn’t estimates ever been even remotely low?), isn’t it fiscally responsible to look at something like this very, very, very closely!? Sure it is. What is the big rush to add a big program with big debt and even more big government to intrude into our lives in an even bigger way?
Again, if we considered even a few of the things in Gary’s message, it might be a much more simple way to cut costs and ineffeciencies. (Let’s apply the KISS principle to this thing - less is more.)
I guess we can all agree that healthcare can be a problem. The insurance companies have far too much control over our care. Decisions that used to be left solely to the doctor are now made, in some cases, by the insurance companies. That’s wrong. And refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions? That’s wrong. And I’m sure there are many more problems with the healthcare system. Not only with the insurance companies but with the providers of healthcare itself.
But why the rush? To hear those in DC talk we have to get this done today! Immediately! Why? Why rush through a major ‘reform’ without serious and cautious considerations? Most of the folks on ‘the hill’ will admit they haven’t even read the bill. And those who claim to have read it seem to be confused about what it will really mean to us. We deserve better. This legislation will have an impact on all of us. It should be handled with great care. We’re all told to never sign anything without first reading it. Why would Congress vote on a bill of this magnitude without reading it? It makes no sense. But, then, we are talking about politicians!
There are at least a couple of aspects of this bill that trouble me. I’m retired but I still have outstanding health insurance and it doesn’t cost me a dime. It is paid in full by my former employer. I want a guarantee that my former employer won’t drop me from their insurance plan. Having to buy my own coverage would create a financial nightmare for me. I’m also concerned about how illegals are going to be excluded. It is my understanding that the amendment that would have put in place a safeguard to check for eligibility was stripped from the bill.
IMO Washington needs to slow down and, at least try to, get it right!
Since you’re covered (for now), the issue may not have the same urgency for you. But 22,000 Americans die every year because they can’t afford medical treatment when they need it, and hundreds of thousands–the large majority of whom actually had insurance–file for bankrupcy each year because of medical expenses.
There’s nothing in the law now to prevent your former employer from dumping your coverage. It’s already happened to a lot of people. The only way to guarantee it won’t happen is for the government to take on resposponsibility of paying for health care, the way it does in Japan, Taiwan, Canada, and several dozen other countries that have better medical outcomes than we do and spend a lot less money geting them.
As for illegal immigrants–the House bill does have explicit language barring them from coverage, but that’s not really the point. Blocking a reform that all of us need because you’re afraid illegal aliens might benefit from it strikes me as a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. There are also public health reasons why it may not be such a hot idea to deny medical treatment to illegals. Contagious disease is no respecter of borders or nationality, and medical science discovered long ago that, in preventing its spread, it’s far more effective to treat the sick than to quarantine them. If you feel that strongly about punishing people who violate immigration laws, I suggest you think of another way to do it.
As for tort reform–if we had a single payer system, the financial rationale for malpractice suits–that is, defraying the added medical expenses that result from medical error or negligence–would disappear.
I arrived at the Chelmsford town hall about 10AM and the doors were already closed, leaving some 250 people outside. At first the noisy minority of wing nuts (including a dozen members of the Lyndon La Rouche cult spouting “Obama is a Nazi” slogans) seemed dominant outside. But I joined a number of SEIU and IUE-CWA colleagues circulating among the crowd, and it quickly became apparent that the majority of folks who could not get into the meeting came to support health care reform, or at least were willing to discuss the issues rationally. From that perspective the labor intervention was very useful, and I encourage everyone who supports reform, even if he/she feels the current bill is inadequate, to participate in any town hall events they can.
Paul B & Chicano Wobbly are correct. So are any of the union folks attending actually asking for single payer? The insurance companies & Right wing loyalists are sending the goons to disrupt the meetings wherever they are held. And yet the White House is negotiating with both insurance companies and Big Pharma companies. Pharma got what they want; govt will NOT negotiate for lower prices (reform?) and we have yet the full details on what “health care reform” we will get. DR WCK: The health care bill indeed will be watered down, but the goons that disrupt town hall mtngs. are NOT voicing opposition by the myths and lies they scream out. Glad you served, but the “highly decorated” sugar coating is not necessary. You have your medical care covered under the VA. We, the rest of America want the very best health care out there too. President Obama, how many yrs. will you give your “reform” a chance to function before moving to a single payer system?
Unfortunately I disagree with the plan being promoted. Forget a public option! What we need is a straight single payer system, as contained in HR676 and endorsed by many unions. We don’t need another confusing system that keeps these for profit insurance companies in place. Tell President Obama to keep it simple - a national single-payer system for everyone. That is real change!
Just reading the posts here tells me we don’t really know what’s coming our way. It is way to convaluted. In fact, I think it’s safe to say it’s the most confusing thing to come out of Washington in a long time - maybe ever!
We need to step back and understand well this big multifaceted thing before rushing ahead. It’s critical to all of us to do something this important right.
Nay-sayers like you came out making the same kinds of arguments against Emancipation, Social Security, the 40hr work-week, Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and a litany of other progressive movements over the course of our Nation’s history. Join the health-care movement or stand aside; either way, I don’t give a damn, ’cause we’re pushin’ through!