Tele-Town Hall

My Congressman from my North Dakota days, Earl Pomeroy (I've been gone for 10 years, but he's still there), had a telephone town hall meeting on health care Monday night, and I got an e-mail about it, so I decided to listen in. I wanted to participate in this town hall craze that's been sweeping the nation.

Pomeroy is avoiding real town halls, but this was his 5th phone version. When I called in, I was asked for the secret password (health care), my name and hometown, and whether I support or oppose Obama's health care ideas. "Oppose," I replied. I was then given some bad jazz to listen to while waiting for the meeting to start.

Pomeroy said that the town halls happening around the country are a "full demonstration on American democracy" for the world to see, and that this issue is as complex and personally important as issues get. He said he's doing these meetings by phone so that he can reach more people and so citizens don't have to drive. He didn't say anything about avoiding getting yelled at.

Before taking questions, Pomeroy stated his general views on the subject. He said:

• We need to "provide certainty that people can get health insurance."
• We need to get rid of denials based on pre-existing conditions or ratings schemes.
• The North Dakota primary-care centered model is a good one (not sure what he's referring to here).
• He will not support a bill that covers illegal immigrants, funds abortions with tax dollars, or has death panels (the invocation of which he called absurb).

With that, he went to the callers. The way this meeting worked was, one could get in line to ask a question by pressing *1, then apparently calls were taken in that order (it didn't sound like any screening would be done).

Here were some highlights from the questions:

• The first question was, "When will you guys forget about getting GOP support?" Pomeroy said it was not yet time for that, and he cited his ND colleague Sen. Conrad's participation in the Finance Committee's gang of six that is negotiating a bill. He cited Conrad a lot during this meeting, almost as if Conrad was a sponsor of the town hall ("this next call brought to you by Senator Conrad!).

• Pomeroy said to the second caller that he supports the current employer-based system of insurance provision. I haven't heard a lot of people say that, but I guess it is the Democratic plan to tax employers that don't provide it. As I've stated, I think we need to move away from this model.

• He mentioned several times that ND has one of the lowest Medicare reimbursement rates in the nation, meaning that ND doctors get paid less than docs from other states for seeing Medicare patients. He brings that up in this article. To some extent, that makes sense, because ND has a lower cost of living. I'm not sure, on the whole, how big of a problem this is, but Pomeroy says if the eventual bill bases payments to doctors on the Medicare system, he'll oppose it.

• The illegal immigrant issue came up once or twice. A lot of people bring this up, but I think it's a minor issue, because anyone who goes to a hospital will get care, whether they are officially under the new system or not. This bill is not the place to address illegal immigration.

• His solution for how to pay for this bill: tax "Cadillac" health plans, tax people who make over $1 million per year, find savings in the system, and "bend the cost curve."

• He supports the idea of an insurance mandate, but he never said the word "mandate." The implication was obvious, though.

• There were a lot of callers from Bismarck, which was strange, because Bismarck is not the largest city in the state. It is the capital, though, so maybe you have more political types there.

• On the public option, he supports one if it's "fair and square," not if it has the aforementioned unbalanced payment rates, or if it has a stacked deck against private insurance.

After about an hour, I got bored and left the meeting. Since it was over the phone, I didn't even have to sneak out the back. I think it's hard to pin down how Pomeroy will end up voting, and I'm sure it depends on the final bill. But it also will depend on political considerations.

In other town hall news, Chet Edwards is having a town hall meeting here tonight. I could go, or just watch on the internet. We'll see how I feel. Either way, I'll file a report.