Unhappiness reigns at Clovis health care meet

By John Ellis / The Fresno Bee

Rep. Devin Nunes held a town-hall meeting Thursday morning in Clovis to explain health-care legislation pending in Congress. What it turned into was a massive gripe session.

Unlike some other health-care forums, however, this one was tame, with few angry outbursts.

One reason may have been the political makeup of the crowd, a clear majority of whom agreed with Nunes, who opposes the current legislation.

Among the crowd of about 225 packed into a Clovis East High School auditorium were doctors, nurses, pharmacists, health-care professionals, business owners, farmers and everyday people.

A few had questions, but many more had opinions. Few seemed happy.

“I think people have their ideas — and they left with their ideas,” said Fresno resident Ben Bergquam, who is pursuing his master’s degree in business administration at California State University, Fresno.

Bergquam told the gathering that he wants government to get out of people’s lives and let the free market work.

Nunes, a Visalia Republican, organized the two-hour meeting to walk people through — and give his opinions on — HR3200. He said the bill is the most likely to emerge from the House of Representatives as President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders push for an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system.

He had broken down the 1,000-page bill into eight parts, but the rapid-fire and short-on-details Power Point presentation appeared to take a back seat to audience questions and comments.

From almost the very start, public comment dominated the meeting. Nunes intended to field questions in short sessions after each presentation, but audience members quickly turned that question time into an opportunity to make extended statements.

One woman said she thought the proposal had the mentality of treating people like a herd instead of individually. A man complained that insurance and pharmaceutical companies, who are making big profits, are behind efforts to kill the bill. Others complained about the high taxes associated with the proposal. Another man said the country’s high infant-mortality rate shows that the current system doesn’t work.

Political leanings colored a vast majority of the questions or statements.

An early query involved statistics Nunes staffers used from a consulting firm known as The Lewin Group.

One person questioned the firm’s ownership, saying it was UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers. The Lewin Group is an Ingenix company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. But Nunes defended The Lewin Group, calling it “effective and independent” and “always good for valuable information.”

A man drew applause when he suggested a first step should be tort reform to reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, which Nunes pointed out is not included in the Democratic Party-backed bill.

While one person used the nation’s infant mortality rate — which is higher than that of some countries with socialized medicine — to show Obama’s proposed reform is needed, another worried about how the reform proposal could lead to government intrusion into personal lives.

At one point, Nunes was asked whether the health-care bill would force people to let the government access their bank accounts. His staffers said they couldn’t find that in the legislation. (One proposal calls for electronic transactions between insurers and doctors, not involving patients.)

Other questions involved whether undocumented immigrants would be covered, as well as who must purchase health insurance. But mostly, people made statements.

“I support a single-payer system,” said Michael Evans, a freelance editor from Fresno.

“This is a start,” he said of the current health-care proposal. “Not a great start, but it is a good start.”

Evans, however, also said the U.S. should look to other nations with nationalized health care to see how they do it. One of his examples was Cuba, a comment that drew the largest chorus of derisive comments of the entire meeting.

After the hearing, Evans said he learned a few things, but felt it was “clearly presented in a very one-sided fashion. The congressman came to this meeting with an agenda.”

Though Nunes said his goal is to offer health-care access to every U.S. citizen, his major concern was how to pay for it. Already, he said, major government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are facing severe funding shortfalls.

“If we don’t fix Medicare and Medicaid first, how are we going to put everyone on a public program?” he asked. Nunes took the opportunity to push his alternative — the Patients’ Choice Act — which he conceded is going nowhere in a Democratic-controlled Congress. Nunes said his alternative is revenue-neutral, solves unfunded liabilities in Medicaid and “empowers the individual.”

The Patients’ Choice Act calls for expanded insurance coverage through tax benefits to individuals and families in the form of a “Medi-Choice” tax rebate, state health insurance exchanges and changes to health savings accounts.

In an interview after the forum, Nunes said he considered it a success. He said everyone was allowed to state their point-of-view, regardless of political leanings, and he felt a few supporters of the Democrats’ proposal were having second thoughts after sitting through the meeting.