Townhall meeting turns into a love fest complete with standing ovations and cheers from a very partisan crowd.

Yesterday I attended the Matsui Townhall meeting on health care.  Click here for the Bee article, the comments are better than the article itself.

This is the Townhall meeting where the school administrator threatened to have me arrested if I held my own gathering or discussion in the school parking lot. When I arrived, I walked over to the group of police and identified myself to them and asked if they had any plans to arrest me. They informed me that they had been briefed at roll call and had no such plans to do so. And furthermore the administrator was out of line for saying that to me. So I got that all straightened out before I entered the meeting room and stood with hundreds of Matsui worshippers.

The process was a bit controlled, if you wanted to ask a question, you had to write your name on a card and put it in a box and it would be drawn out during the meeting. Of course, my name – and many others – never got picked. What a shame, cause I was loaded for bear as I am sure others were as well.

Matsui was introduced and received a standing ovation from an obvious democratic group of worshipers. It was almost embarrassing to watch and listen to the group cheer and and applaud this congresswoman who has done nothing for her district since she has been in Washington DC.

I would have been embarrassed, and if I am ever blessed to serve, I will not allow this kind of rock star reverence in any of my functions. I don’t have a big enough ego and I will not allow any of my supporters to become worshippers of me either. It is much too dangerous folks.

And yet, all of this for someone that in early August was not going to have any meetings, then did two ‘tele-town halls’ after KTKZ’s Eric Hogue, the Sacramento Bee and I roasted her. I actually held a Public Townhall that was mentioned in the newspaper, and it seemed to be the emphasis behind the Bee’s eventual editorial calling her out.

Yeah, she get a heroes welcome after telling the press I was out of step by holding my own Townhall meeting in her district.

Once the meeting started it became very apparent that only ‘feel good questions’ were going to be asked and those speaking in attendance wanted nothing government to give them their health care – no matter what else the plan entailed or was going to costs.

As I was standing there, making mental notes, I recall only two hard hitting questions being asked about Congress taking the public option in which Matsui said she was on the Federal plan and her hands were tied. After several questions she retreated back to the podium and just real long winded stuff that was prepared that eventually lead to nowhere and never answered the question.

She spoke of the evils of health care companies. She said if she could do it all over from scratch she would do a single-payer Health Care system.  But a check on her campaign contributions and we can see she has taken thousands of dollars from Health Care Political Action Committees over the years. So she is speaking out of both sides of her mouth. Not that any of the local media will do any research on this; lazy journalists in Sacramento these days.

Some folks got up and left halfway through the meeting. I spoke to a few of them as they walked past,  they had attended my meeting and said this meeting was an all out joke and a waste of time.

Matsui went as far as to say that if businesses made too much profit, they should have to incur windfall taxes on those profits! Let me tell you the government has no right on how much profit is too much. In the private sector in good years you put away profits for the lean years, but in government you just go into debt and print more money. So it stands to reason that making profit is evil as far as the Government goes.

Here is a letter that a friend of mine sent to Doris Matsui.  Not one of these issues where raised.

 
Dear Mrs. Matsui;
I am taking a moment to write this letter, as I was unable to rearrange my schedule for this morning to attend your town hall meeting. As I noted in my earlier email sent you on Tuesday. The exceptionally short notice provided by your office for this meeting, made attendance questionable at best. However, in spite of not being able to attend in person, I would like to take a few minutes today, to express some of my thoughts on several related subjects.

First, with regard to the scheduling of this meeting I would like to expand on the thought I expressed in my earlier email. As I said, at best a four day notification represents shoddy work by you and your staff. At worst, it could be seen as a deliberate attempt to stifle community participation. It also speaks volumes as to how you see the involvement of the individuals you represent. I am sorry that you chose to show so little consideration and understanding for the needs of your constituents, by not providing adequate notice for this meeting. In addition, I must believe that I am not the only person who had already made commitments for this morning that could not be altered.

Next, with regard to the health care proposals currently under discussion in the House and Senate, I would regard a number of the points laid currently on the table as being ill-considered. Yes I will grant you that as a starting point, our current health care system has a number of flaws. However, none of these issues require the radical systemic restructuring being proposed. Each of the major failure points could and should be addressed by a targeted approach, which would address only that issue and allow for time to assess the impact of that correction on the overall market place. This methodology would also provide time required to develop quantified information on the factors driving the current costs which are involved in all aspects of health care.

As starting points, I could suggest the following pieces of legislation:

• Mandating portability of coverage, under employer based programs;
• Penalties for improper declinations, both of new policies and of payment for existent insureds, this should included national standards for disclosure of conditions, time windows for relevancy and applicability to conditions;
• Open records and file requirements, coupled with penalties for inaccurate record keeping.
• Modifying the current ceiling on the current public programs to serve more of the working poor.
• The establishment of a limited risk pool market to bridge the gap between the current public programs and the remainder of the health care market.
• Providing a reasonable schedule of payments for provided services.

Again, I see these as simple starting points and not the complete answers to the issues facing us. But by addressing simple starting points, allows us both to meet some very pressing immediate needs for some individuals and the time to better understand the deeper systemic issues facing us.

I would also like to take a moment to address a couple of points covered in the popular media. I cannot believe that creating the new federal departments to administer a national health program can be done in a cost neutral fashion. In one version of the bills now pending, there are approximately 60 new boards, agencies, etc., which would be added into the federal structure. Each of these will require an additional line item federal budget for their funding.

As to President Obama’s often repeated statement that “no one who likes their current coverage will lose it”; I’m sorry, but at best this represents a deep misunderstanding of how the current system works. In the case of most small to mid-sized businesses, I suspect that once the cost for individual plans exceeds the penalty/tax for not providing an individual plan; I believe that the plan will be discontinued. This will ultimately force the change that the President is saying will not happen. As a collateral effect, modification to require health coverage could cause changes to employee status such as, reducing full time employees to part time status,( if there is an exemption to coverage for part-time employees).

Rationing of coverage would continue under most of the vapor-bills. The change that would occur would be that is managed by a federal agency rather than an individual insurance company. This would be accomplished by any of several legislative provision related to the appropriateness of care and services. This coupled with the proposed provisions for “utilization review at each change of life-condition” and proposed requirements that doctors can only provide approved services, is what I suspect lead to the “death panel” remarks.

Looking at cost containment, I am sorry but I do not see how any of the proposals currently on the table will lead to real and effective cost control, while still maintaining the current level of services available to the majority of the U.S. population. To this point all of the proposals that I have reviewed, seem to rely solely on cost containment by some form of reduction, either in services available/provided or by a reduction in payment to vendors. This approach does nothing to address the underlying complex issues, which have come together synergistically, to form the multifaceted issue we are facing today. The end result of this approach is that in artificially capping one aspect of the system, we will actually make the long term issues worse and introduce monetary stress into other areas of national system. Additionally, as we absorb an ever increasing percentage of the budget into the health care system, we will be forced to take those dollars from other segments of the economy. This will happen both by the necessity of increasing taxes/fees on individuals and business and by taking dollars from other parts of the Federal Budget. Neither source can absorb this stress without penalty at this time.

In conclusion, I would have to regard the current items under discussion as fatally flawed proposals, which would not only severally damage the health care system; but that would have ripple effects throughout our economy as a whole.

Sincerely
Stewart Howe

These are the type of questions and thoughts that should have been raised. I have to tell you after seeing the idol worshipping that went on, I have serious doubts about some of the voters mindset, they just want the government to take care of them from the craddle to the grave.

One questioner even went to say that he thought Health Care should be free for everyone!  In which I replied to my neighbor “why do we just make gasoline free too and add in the costs of groceries and make them free also!” 

Many of the questioners never could ask a questions as they were more interested in pitching a service or a product or telling the Congresswoman how much they adore her.

Folks, I know these maybe some of the very voters I will want to vote for me next November, but they need to stop and pay attention to the ramifications of the single-payer system that Matsui wants to put us on. I hope you will join me in calling her office and asking the tough questions that I would have asked and furthermore ask her to debate me on this issue: (916) 498-5600.

I guarantee those that watch will walk away with a much different attitude about Matsui and government sponsored Health Care than those that just rolled over for her on Saturday.

The Paul Smith for Congress website is www.PaulSmithforCongress.org 
Republican Candidate for the 5th Congressional District (Sacramento)