McCaskill fields questions about health care bill in Hillsboro

A large crowd turned out for McCaskill’s health care forum. Before the event started, police monitoring the streets by the college campus told drivers that the gymnasium was at capacity and that organizers were no longer letting people in the building.

Crowd members listen to McCaskill’s answers to questions concerning health insurance competition.

By Audrey Spalding
Show-Me Institute

Sen. Claire McCaskill was on the defensive at her health care town hall forum on Tuesday. More than 1,000 people attended the meeting in Hillsboro, many of whom were critics of the national health care reform initiative currently being considered in the Senate.

The forum was held in the gymnasium of Jefferson College, and the wooden bleachers on three walls of the gymnasium were packed, along with the chairs set up to accommodate spillover. Many people, for lack of space, stood.

Oddly, no posters or banners were allowed, a change from the health care forum hosted earlier by McCaskill’s regional director, Michelle Sherod. At one point, a woman was forcibly removed from the forum for unfurling a poster.

At the beginning of the forum, and throughout, McCaskill worked to keep the crowd calm. “This is a patriotic democracy, not a sporting event,” she said.

Although no fights broke out, the crowd was loud and quick to boo or applaud comments from either McCaskill or audience members.

In an effort to acknowledge the legitimacy of attendees’ views — of both reform proponents and detractors —McCaskill borrowed a phrase from a recent op-ed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Steny Hoyer criticizing loud health care town hall protests as “drowning out opposing views.”

“It’s wrong to say that anybody’s opinion is manufactured or un-American,” McCaskill said. Several crowd members cheered.

“I’m not here to circumvent any portion of debate or any portion of discussion,” she said.

The second question of the day, and a number of those that came later, addressed the issue of abortion. One questioner asked whether federal money would be spent to provide abortions, at which point the loud crowd booed.

“There is not one word in this bill that would allow tax dollars to go to abortions,” McCaskill said.

“The federal law is that no federal money can be used for abortions,” she said. “I will not vote for a bill that will change the federal law.”

Others were concerned that a public option, as proposed, would effectively kill private insurance coverage.

A man from O’Fallon asked how a private plan could compete with a public plan if the government could subsidize the public plan below market rates.

McCaskill said that if someone were to place a bet that the public plan would eventually lead to a single payer government-provided system, “Take the bet and take their money. We will not do this. It’s not even on the table.”

At this point, the crowd began shouting.

“You don’t trust me?” asked McCaskill.

“No,” came the extraordinarily loud response, although some health care reform proponents stayed silent.

Joe McMahon, of Arnold, left the town hall early. He said he wasn’t leaving because of the shouting, although he acknowledged “it gets a little out of hand.”

McMahon, who wore a health care reform sticker, gets his health insurance from his employer and Medicare. “I came here to back up the party and to back up McCaskill,” he said.

“Just because you’re a poor person and you get sick doesn’t mean you should die.”

Toward the end of the forum, McCaskill answered a question from Lynda Greenlee, of Chesterfield, concerning private options for health insurance coverage, such as health savings accounts (HSAs).

“I would not vote against a bill just because a private option isn’t in it,” said McCaskill.

“I wanted to see how strong she was in support of free-market issues,” Greenlee said later.

Greenlee, who has been self-employed as a systems consultant since 2001, has an HSA, and her children do as well. Her son, whose employer offers health insurance, “got better coverage than what he could get through the company,” she said.

“It’s your money,” she said. “You get to keep it. I like it.”

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