August 14, 2009, 2:50 pm
Live Blogging: Obama Hosts a Town Hall in Montana
By David Stout
4:11 | The town hall has ended. Mr. Stout’s coverage is below.
4:10 | The president seems to have enjoyed the back-and-forth, at least enough to take an extra question. But the last question is as much a Montanan’s tribute to Montana as it is a question. Bozeman is “the last best place,” an audience member says. The president flashes an easy smile. “Montana, you’ve been great,” he says by way of farewell.
4:07 | Words matter. A man from the insurance business asks, without a trace of venom in his voice, why the president has stopped talking so much about “health care reform” and has been talking more about “health insurance reform.” Isn’t this an effort to “vilify” the insurance business? Well, no, the president says. But there are still insurance practices that need to be eliminated, he says, and if true reform is enacted, the insurance companies will have the incentives to make good changes.
4:03 | “Give a substantial subsidy” to help small businesses provide coverage for their workers — that’s one of the goals toward which he and Mr. Baucus, whom he calls “Max,” are working, Mr. Obama says. “Give you a tax break, so it’s easier for you to meet your bottom line,” the president describes the idea to a woman who is part owner of a small lumber yard. The president adroitly and courteously acknowledges, again, the card-carrying N.R.A. member.
3:59 | Will a public option pay its own way? One questioner wonders. A complicated issue, the president replies, and no one disagrees with that. Think of it this way, Mr. Obama says: people who have insurance coverage right now are already subsidizing those who do not have it, since providers inevitably pass along the costs.
3:56 | An exchange, “like a marketplace,” where people can choose what kind of insurance they need — that’s what the president says he wants. Yes, a “public option” should be available, he says. But that would not be a “government takeover” and would not kill existing employer-provided health insurance, despite charges to the contrary, the president says.
3:52 | You can’t have something for nothing, the president says. He says he’s “amused,” but he doesn’t seem amused, when he talks about how the previous administration and its Capitol Hill allies enacted a Medicare drug benefit without bothering to pay for it. He and Max Baucus want to pay for the changes they propose, the president says. “And by the way,” the president tells the N.R.A. member who made what seemed to be a veiled allusion to the Second Amendment right to bear arms, “I believe in the Constitution, too.”
3:48 | A card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association has the floor. He doesn’t like news with “a spin,” so he gets all his news from the cable networks. That brings a big presidential smile, as Mr. Obama cautions him to choose his cable network carefully. The questioner thinks Mr. Baucus has been “locked in a dark room” down in Washington. The questioner doesn’t like tax increases, and he seems worried that even more are on the horizon. The president is unfazed. Raise taxes on the rich, and a lot of money — not all of it — for health care reform will be there, Mr. Obama says.
3:43 | The current system could be called “a disease-care system” rather than “a health care system,” the president says. Right now, the system is “perverse,” in that it does too little to encourage preventive care, he says.
3:42 | A single mother of two children and a college student — wow, one young woman has a full life. And one of her two children has serious health problems? What would health care changes do to the Medicaid program she so desperately needs, she asks. Nothing, the president says. But the changes he wants would help Medicaid and Medicare by saving money overall. The woman gets a bipartisan round of applause when Mr. Obama calls her “a courageous mother.”
3:38 | “I hate government programs, but keep your hands off my Medicare.” The president says he has heard just those words, “and there’s a little bit of a contradiction there.” (Yes, Mr. Obama does use understatement now and then.) But Medicare can be made more efficient, and many billions can be saved, by eliminating waste — something the insurance companies don’t want. Do the insurance companies have enough money and influence to fight back?
3:35 | The president moves around and gestures, seemingly at east with a microphone. “Preserve the best of what our system offers,” he says, “but protect the vulnerable.” And never mind the assertions that government is trying to get between patient and doctor, or take over the health system. “It’s just not true.”
3:33 | Americans spend “$5,000 or $6,000? more per person than the people of any other “advanced country” on earth, Mr. Obama says, not being specific about a time span for that spending. “A uniquely American way” is what the president calls for, not the Canadian way, or the Dutch way, or the British way. The majority of people in America get their health care on the job, he notes. Let’s not scrap the system, let’s improve it.
3:29 | If the system isn’t fixed, “in about eight years, Medicare goes into the red,” the president warns. That line will raise a lot of gray eyebrows, as surveys show that older people are leery of any changes to Medicare or Social Security. “Change isn’t easy, and by the way, it never starts in Washington,” he says, urging Montana people to talk to one another. Now, he’s going to take questions. His jacket is off, and his sleeves are rolled up.
3:27 | The country is closer than ever to health care reform, the president says. Drug companies are on board, so is the powerful AARP, which lobbies for older people. “But because we’re getting close, the fighting is getting fierce,” he says, blaming diehard “special interests” and their “scare tactics.”
3:25 | More applause for the president as he says people shouldn’t have to be broke when they get sick. The present system too often works better for the insurance companies than it does for patients, he says. He gets big applause when he says he doesn’t want bureaucrats — from the government or the insurance industry — meddling in health care. (Do people know that the word “bureaucrat” comes from the French bureau, meaning “office”? It seems “bureaucrat” is a four-letter word.)
3:22 | “This is personal for me,” the president says, recalling his mother’s fight with cancer and her difficulties keeping her coverage. “It’s wrong,” he says, “and we’re going to put a stop to it once and for all.”
3:21 | “A civil, honest, often difficult” collective conversation — that’s the president’s description of the town hall meetings about health care. He says the raucous scenes shown on television haven’t told the whole story, by a long shot. Zeroing in on the insurance industry, he says his plan would prevent the dreaded phone calls telling sick people their insurance has been canceled just when they need it the most.
3:17 | First, the president defends the huge economic stimulus program he pushed through Congress. A lot of it has lowered the taxes of many Americans, he says. “We’re not out of the woods,” he says, recalling that some 8,000 people in nearby Bozeman recently applied for just a few hundred vacant jobs. The president’s advance people have done some research.
3:13 | The elk and moose of Montana are good contrasts to “the bull” in Washington, the president says. Well, Montana isn’t part of the borscht belt. Humor aside, Mr. Obama turns to the plight of people who lose coverage because of serious illness or pre-existing conditions: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
3:09 | Big cheers for the president, sans tie and smiling, who calls for applause for his Hill ally, Mr. Baucus. Mr. Obama also pays tribute to the junior senator, Jon Tester, who looks more like a rancher with his crew cut. (He is a rancher, isn’t he?)
3:05 | Senators Baucus and Tester walk in smiling. “It’s just plain wrong” for insurance companies to cut off coverage when people need it the most, Mr. Baucus says, warming up the audience. Oops, television links are interrupted on not one but two cable channels. Stayed tuned!
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Montana, where President Obama is holding a town hall meeting this afternoon on health care, offers a veritable smorgasbord for the political junkie.
Much of the vast state of mountains and plains is Republican territory, especially the eastern counties and Flathead and Ravalli Counties in the west, according to “The Almanac of American Politics.” But the labor movement is strong in Montana, in large part because of early battles between mining companies and their workers, so there are Democratic strongholds under the Big Sky.
The state does not just defy political stereotypes, it can be downright quirky. Republican presidential candidates have won there in recent years, and Senator John McCain carried the state in 2008 by about 3 percentage points. But Montana’s governor, Brian Schweitzer, and both its senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, are Democrats. (The state’s lone House member, Denny Rehberg, is a Republican.)
The venue for President Obama’s town hall session is Belgrade, near Bozeman, in southwestern Montana. The White House said it expected about 1,300 people, with most tickets distributed on a first-come-first-served basis.
We’ll be live-blogging the event as it happens. Please check back for updates.
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