The following is contents from an email from Sam Sussman, a progressive who lives in Orange County. Mr. Sussman was one of several Democrats and progressives that attended Assembly member Greg Ball’s first sham “town hall” last night. It’s very obvious that what is happening at these events is choreographed, McCarthyist-style demagoguery on the part of Ball and his acolytes. I also want to remind progressives to please attend the last two of these meetings. We need our voices heard on health care.
Tonight I attended a forum on health care with Greg Ball, NYS Assemblyman who is challenging John Hall in the 19th Congressional district in 2010.
Mr. Ball opened the meeting by stating that he was there to hear all perspectives on “government-run” health-care.
The first speaker stood up and began to rant –quite inarticulately- about how socialism was evil. She mentioned no specifics or facts that related to any of the five health care bills presently in Congress.
The next speaker did the same. This continued for forty-five minutes. Again and again, individuals –mostly elder- would stand up and do anything from rant against socialism to complain that illegal immigrants were covered in the bill (“Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States,” taken directly from section 246). Many complained that abortion would be mandated in the bill (also untrue) and whined about the high cost, despite the fact that the bill is deficit neutral. Others complained about government rationing, seemingly and conveniently ignoring the fact that individuals can keep their private insurance under the new plan if they desire. More made comparisons to the English and Canadian system, ignoring the fact that the proposed bills implement a public option, not a single payer system. Others whined that the bill would destroy small businesses by mandating that they insure their employees, despite the fact that this mandate applies only to small businesses with a payroll of $500,000 or more. Others skipped concrete complaints altogether, and merely rampaged against President Obama and his perceived socialist agenda.
After forty-five minutes of this, I stepped outside. There I saw Bob, another man who I knew was on one of the local Democratic committees but couldn’t name, and Jonathon Jacobson, the Chair of the Orange County Democratic Committee. They were all talking about how terrible this event was, and Bob mused that he didn’t realize “how many morons lived in Orange County.” I mentioned that somebody had to say something at least relatively rational- we could not afford to legitimize these radical and extremist opinions by forwarding no response of our own. There was mumbling, and it was obvious nobody was stepping up to the plate.
I walked back inside and got on line. I wrote a few notes in my cell phone, trying to find where I could possibly start, how I could possibly break down a sea of misinformation, anger, and confusion and counter what was unfolding before my eyes with rational remarks founded in fact. I waited on line for about twenty minutes while searching for the answer.
Medicare seemed to be a good place to start. The crowd was overwhelmingly composed of senior citizens, and there had been much complaining about cuts to Medicare. I knew that the truth is that individual Medicare plans won’t be touched- the $500B savings over ten years that President Obama talks about is derived from the increased leverage that the federal government will have to negotiate rates with pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and doctors as a result of the increased number of people under government jurisdiction in the public option. Yet I knew that was too complex to explain, and that I would be cut off before I could even finish.
Finally it was my turn. As I took the mic, I looked out at the crowd. “My name is Sam Sussman,”* I said, “and I live in Chester. May I see, by a show of hands, how many of you are on Medicare?” Almost everybody raised his or her hand. “OK,” I continued. “We have a system whereby health insurance for senior citizens is subsidized, because if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be able to afford health care. What would be wrong with doing the same for those who presently cannot afford health care?”
The crowd went nuts. There was screaming and booing. Some yelled, “We worked for ours!” obviously missing the points that Medicare is subsidized, and that many people without insurance also work.
One woman yelled out “It’s not our problem, it’s not our responsibility!” I was taken by the outrageous audience response, and was unable to speak over the noise for a few moments, but at this I began to speak again. “Oh, it’s not your responsibility?” I said, voice rising. “It’s not your problem? Guess what, people die in America because they don’t have health care. That’s wrong. It is our problem. It is our responsibility. We’re all Americans and we’re all in this together.”
The crowd kept going. They were yelling, screaming, booing. Many yelled out “Let him speak,” but others called for me to step down. One of Ball’s aides came over to me and asked for the mic until the crowd calmed down. I handed it to him.
Ball, who had been sitting about seven to eight feet away from me, stood up and took the mic. “How many veterans do we have here?” he asked. Many hands went up. “OK,” he said, “you fought for this. You fought for freedom of speech.” Then he turned to me. “But you know you were the first person to get up here and yell, and you didn’t need to do that.” I was outraged. I had only raised my voice because the entire crowd of some 200 people were screaming and booing me in an attempt to drown me out. Jan Howe stood up and yelled something to that effect in my support (thanks Jan!
Ball then handed me the mic and sat down.
I continued. “You mention veterans, sir,” I said, turning to him. “You served, correct?” He responded in the affirmative. “Thank you for your service, sir. We have single payer for our veterans through the VA. How do you feel about giving government-run health care to those who gave their blood, sweat, and tears for America?”
Ball responded by telling me that he knew a woman whose husband had died under the VA system, and that, therefore, they weren’t too happy with “government health care.” This has been a conservative style of argument since Ronald Reagan’s 1964 A Time for Choosing speech, and probably before that. Conservatives are great at pointing out one or two people who take advantage of the system, or one horror story in a government-run program, and then move from that single example to the conclusion that the whole system or program is flawed. These sorts of arguments are devoid of any logic and ignore the basic fact that no system is perfect and no program flawless.
I motioned for the mic back. Ball hesitated, but finally gave it to me.
“So then you support repealing the VA single payer system as it stands now?” I asked.
The crowd took over from here. One man in the front yelled out “This is not a debate.” Another man to my right started screaming at me. Many in the crowd were yelling at me to leave. (It should be noted that my remarks were much shorter than most other speakers, even with the back and forth with Ball, and that only one person was cut off the whole night, after a solid 15 minutes).
Ball did not respond to my remark. The next few second are fuzzy in my mind, but there was more yelling and the aide indicated I should give up the mic. I handed it to the next man on line. He remarked that he was going to “give me a civics lesson.” I was still standing in front of the room, and I shot back at him, saying, “I just spent two months in Congress, sir.”
At the word ‘Congress,’ the crowd reacted with more anger than they had displayed in response to any of my earlier remarks. They hissed, booed, and yelled. To them, this was the obvious and heretofore missing explanation: I was a brainwashed Washington tool who knew nothing at all. Great irony exists in the fact that part of the reason I initially stepped up is that I have dealt with this issue intensely for two months and felt an obligation to share my knowledge with the crowd. But they weren’t having it. As the man had said, “this is not a debate.” Despite Ball’s promise, nobody in the audience –including him- wanted to hear anything but the myths and absurdities that they all clung to so tightly. Difference of opinion was not going to be tolerated.
The man continued to talk as a few people came up to me. One man told me that my problem was that I evidently don’t watch FOX News. Another man came up to me and said, “I’m from Romania. I can tell you all about the evils of communism.” I’m sure he could, and I would have loved to hear, but I’m still trying to figure out how a public option fits into Marxism. Yet, because facts and history had not been skewed enough in one night, the woman after the man who followed me compared Obama to Hitler..
Afterwards, many people approached me. Some shook my hand and commended my courage. Others tried to argue with me. I attempted to explain calmly and rationally the truth behind many of the false and malicious rumors, ranging from euthanasia to Medicare cuts to the myth that all people can get health care in America.
(This is important and warrants explanation. In 1986, Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. This law states that emergency rooms cannot reject patients who are uninsured. It does not ensure medical treatment for the life-saving treatment that is often quite extensive, however, although the misperception is it does. For example, if you walk into an emergency room with cancer, you won’t be treated. Also, EMTALA does not cover surgery of any kind. So if you are uninsured in American and you get cancer, you die.)
So this is what we are up against. Greg Ball is young, energetic, good-looking and articulate. He will excite Republicans in the 19th district with an energy that John Hall does not project.
Ball is traveling around the district and using the fear and anger of the American people as a trampoline for his political career. It should be noted that Ball never corrected or clarified the words of anybody who spoke at the event, including people who said that death panels were included in the bill, the woman who compared Obama to Hitler, and the man who memorably and repeatedly called the bill “a license to kill.” If he were truly interested in talking about health care reform, and not just appearing as if he’s the man to save everybody from an evil government scheme that does not exist, he would not have allowed these insulting and untrue statements to go uncorrected. Greg Ball is an exploiter and opportunist who must be stopped.
Yet who is going to stop him? The Democratic showing was weak. One party leader appeared for half an hour, said nothing, and left. Another high-ranking Orange Dem had courage enough to speak a few words on the side to a camera, but not enough to address the audience at large. Nobody else spoke out in support of a public option or single payer.
Where are our voices? Who is going to stand up for the uninsured and underprivileged? What are we so afraid of? Screaming crowds of misinformed senior citizens? Please.
We are up against the great challenge that the progressive movement has always faced: The fact that is that it is always easier to scare somebody who is satisfied into maintaining the status quo at the costs of others than it is to encourage those individuals, through rational argument and compassionate appeal, to support something that serves the greater good.
We must be the ones to articulate the facts and the truth in support of our objective. And we must recognize that this can never be done through silence. SS.
*These are obviously not my exact words, as I cannot recall them verbatim, but I estimate that they’re 90% word-for-word.
