Pahrump’s Town Hall Meeting last Sunday

Last Sunday I attended the Pahrump Town Hall Meeting at the Pahrump Nugget. Over 200 people attended, 50 of whom arose and spoke about the current health care system, the formation of that system being considered in Congress, or their personal experiences with the health care system.

Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign were invited to attend along with Congressman Dean Heller. Likewise invited were Congresswomen Shelly Berkley and Dina Titus though neither represents Pahrump. None attended or sent a representative. Only two of them even acknowledged their invitations.

Five chairs were set in front of the audience with their pictures appended to represent the Nevada’s Congressional Delegation.

A number of cameras recorded the event.

Dan Schinhofen, my fellow columnist in this newspaper, put the affair together. His idea, and a good one I thought, was to video the event and send copies of the video to each member of the Congressional Delegation. Since none of the Delegation had held their own Town Hall Meeting in Pahrump, or anywhere else in Nye County, residents of Pahrump was afforded no opportunity to discuss health care reform with any of their elected representatives in Congress. To his credit, Dan is seeing that the Delegation will hear from Pahrump whether they like it or not.

I doubt they will like it.

The reaction of the audience upon learning none of the elected Congressional members would attend or be represented by a member of their staff was negative. It was as though the audience felt they were being ignored. I could not escape the feeling that members of the audience can be expected to reciprocate by ignoring the Delegation on their next election day.

Having watched other Town Hall Meetings across the nation on TV I was not sure what to expect from the Pahrump audience. I was billed as being the Progressive liberal, Dan as the Conservative–opposite bookends of the political spectrum. And we are. We both were co-hosts of the event.

Though the event was not a political rally I could not help but scan the audience to see if I could identify any Democrats. Out of the 200+, I saw eight I could recognize.

The audience was well behaved. No banner waving, no orchestrated demonstrations. No AR15’s or handguns in view. As each spoke their allotted two minutes, the audience quietly and respectfully listened to each.

I saw the entire event as a classic example of grassroots democracy in action. The audience was attentive and engaged. I commend them for that.

The comments were a wide-ranging smorgasbord of views held by those that spoke. It displayed the intensity and seriousness with which they viewed the state of the current health care system and of their views of proposed reforms.

One man told of an experience with his wife who experienced cardiac emergency. He took her to Desert View hospital, learned there was no cardiologist to attend her. She had to be taken by helicopter to Desert Springs hospital in Las Vegas. He related the helicopter transport cost $16-18,000 and her stay at the Las Vegas cost another $26,000.

Two others shared their experiences in Canada’s health care system with ill loved ones in which they were told to take them home to die peacefully.

Distrust of government seemed to me to be the common theme throughout the audience. Fear of “socialized medicine,” intercession of government bureaucrats between patients and their doctors, inability of government to conduct any program successfully.

Only two of the number of bills wending their way through Congress were mentioned–HR 3200 and HR 676. Several speakers would refer to “the bill” without identifying which bill they were speaking. One of the problems, it seems to me to be prevalent, is that there has yet to be a single bill to arise for the public to address. There are several more, each from multiple Senate and House Committees. For example, the S 703 bill was not mentioned Sunday.

Until all the pending bills are digested into a single bill, it is almost impossible to evaluate the impact of health care reform.

The final item I would like to mention here is about the influence of special interest money on Congress’ treatment of healthcare reform.

I am nagged by the thought that perhaps one of the reasons, if not the reason, none of the Nevada Congressional Delegation appeared is that the actual constituents of the delegation is the health care insurance companies who feed so much money to members of Congress. Congress seems to be controlled and directed by those corporate interests, rather than ordinary citizens such as attended the Pahrump Town Hall Meeting. Perhaps that 200+ were forgotten the day after election.

Update: September 3, 2009. The Pahrump Valley Times stories about the Town Hall Meeting. Emotions vivid at health care forum and Obama proposal compared with Canadian health system.

Related posts:

1. Pahrump Town Hall Meeting on Healthcare Reform to be held August 30
2. Pahrump’s Conservatives and Progressives Demonstrate
3. My Healthcare Pitch to Nevada’s Congressional Delegation
4. Prosecute Town Hall Meeting attendees that speak words tending to cause a breach of the peace
5. Senator Harry Reid will be in Pahrump Monday—Nye Democrats asked to demonstrate