Senator Mark Begich's Town Hall on Health Care: Tales from a Survivor

Alaska Senator and self-described "Moderate Democrat" Mark Begich had a town hall meeting on health care reform while he was back in Anchorage this weekend. He had already conducted two such meetings, but had been getting pressure to have another one. The last two happened earlier in the summer before it was fashionable to show up at such events and yell rude things, and the teabag crew wanted a shot now that they were paying attention.

It would have been easy for the Senator to say no, that he'd already done it. But Begich has never shied away from talking to the opposition. A regular guest on hostile right wing talk radio programs since his days as Anchorage mayor, no one can ever accuse him of cutting himself off from the people. Nor can they accuse him of only talking to "friendly" media, as our notorious ex-governor did, and continues to do via her Facebook account. Palin can just "unfriend" people. Begich pulls them up a chair.

I found an empty seat near the back, and I noted that the turnout for this health care town hall was probably almost quadruple the number of attendees that came to the one in June, and numbered in the hundreds. The previous crowd was more than 90% in support of a public option by a show of hands, which raised the eyebrow of the Senator at the time.

He started off with a Ross Perot-like display of charts and graphs and said that inaction was not an option.

Here is what the Senator feels that any bill must include to have his support:

• No Discrimination for pre-existing conditions


• No Exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays


• No cost-sharing for preventive care


• No dropping of coverage for the seriously ill


• No gender discrimination


• No annual or lifetime caps on coverage


• Extended coverage for young adults


• Guaranteed insurance reform -- companies must renew of patient pays in full, and cannot refuse renewal because someone becomes sick

That's what it said on the hand-out. It also included some alarming statistics like the fact that every day 20 Alaskans lose their health insurance. That may sound small, but in a state like Alaska with a population of around 600,000, it isn't.

Then he went on to say that he would like it if every American got the same health care coverage that he enjoyed as a member of the Senate.

And finally, it was time to take questions. The first guy right out of the box said, "Well you're a politician so right away we know you're a liar and a thief, and you're a lapdog for the DNC." The first thing we have to deal with is tort reform, he said. So "man up." And then the punchline ... "I'm being courteous ... with all due respect." This was not a good way to start.

It was then that I first noticed that the woman sitting in front of me did not share my sensibilities. The "we know you're a liar" line was met with gleeful laughter, loud applause, and a knowing glance at the man sitting to her left. Teabagger at 12:00. Teabag lady appeared to be in her 50s. She was practically bristling with negativity. Whenever somebody said something critical, she clapped furiously. Whenever someone said something nice, she folded her arms and shook her head back and forth. I took a seminar in college called "Non-Verbal Communication," but you certainly didn't need any background to recognize that Teabag lady had already made up her mind exactly how she felt about things.

The next guy talked about how he didn't learn much in college, but he knew that there were "lies, damn lies, and statistics." So all the Ross Perot stuff at the beginning was smoke and mirrors, according to him. The Senator pointed out that the fact that the cost of family health insurance purchased through an employer had doubled in the state of Alaska from 1997, when it cost $6026, to 2006, when it cost $12,198 was just that: a fact.

"Do you promise to read the bill?" a woman asked in an accusatory tone, followed by enthusiastic applause. The Senator said that in fact, he had read the bill. "You lie!" came from the back of the room. This was going to be a long two hours.

And so the microphone went around the room. The applause seemed split about 50/50 politically. The jeering and rudeness was from one side only.

A libertarian piped up telling us that he didn't want or need health insurance. And if he did need health care, he'd earn the money himself, and save up and pay for his own damn medical bills. But he didn't want any government interference at all. The only time he was ever in a hospital, he said, was when he was born, and that was his mother's fault. I wonder if he'll ever need an ambulance, and if he does, will he have a little sack of gold coins with which to pay the paramedics? He'll have to make sure to remain conscious so he can do that. Otherwise he might have to bleed to death on principle.

Another angry guy said that he wanted the "same health care that you get!" He said it in a finger-in-the-chest kind of way. This was met with wild clapping from the Teabag lady, who, for the first time was actually bouncing up and down in her seat. This was odd, I thought, considering how the Senator had just said that this was exactly the kind of thing that he wanted. Then, it hit me. She wasn't even listening.

The Senator immediately piped up and said that this was exactly what he had just said, and that he agreed 100 percent. He wanted everyone to have the same kind of health care coverage he had. Absolutely. Applause rose from the audience, but not from Teabag lady. Nope. She was right back to folded arms, shaking head and muttering under her breath to the guy next to her. She had gone from gleeful bouncing to angry muttering for the same message. She didn't care at all what the Senator had to say. She was there to be mad. She was not there to listen, or learn, or engage in dialogue. She had no idea what she wanted or why. She was told by Fox News or local wingnut talk show host Eddie Burke or Glenn Beck that the American thing to do was get off the couch and show up mad. She had no interest in using all this passionate energy to actually read the bill, or get educated about the issue, or do any research, or know a good idea when she heard it. All she knew is if it came out of the mouth of an angry guy then she was all for it, and if it came out of the mouth of Senator Begich, then she was totally against it. And it didn't even bother her that it could be the exact same thing.

I realized at this point that I was clenching my jaw so hard it felt like my teeth would crack. I grabbed my Blackberry and tweeted "fantasizing about thwacking teabag lady in the back of the head with my Blackberry."

And then the responses came:
shannynmoore - Easy, Mud....easy.
GottaLaff - Me too, and I'm not even there!
GreatGrey - Ask that lady in front of you if she's boiled any frogs lately.
MediaMavenMyrna - Go ahead. We won't tell!
rtbarnes - Has a line formed yet for next up?
Tymlee - What a resounding, cavernous echo it would make. Waste of a Blackberry to boot.

The demonic scowl on my face had been beaten into submission by Twitter. I was actually smiling. And Teabag lady was saved by the miracle of social media.

Intellectually, we all know this. We know that the people that go to these events really aren't interested in what anyone has to say. But to see it so clearly and so close was quite something.

A couple people spoke up in favor of a public option, which was met with healthy applause, including mine. I even "woooo"ed once, just to watch Teabag lady's shoulders rise about three inches until she looked like she had no neck. One of the public option people was a member of the military, which once again had Teabag lady confused. Lots of applause for the military part, and lots of head shaking and arm folding for the public option part.

The Senator said some good things and some not so good things, depending where you stand. He wants reform, and conversation. He wants a good bill, and he wants to help people and small businesses. He wants people to be informed, and provided links and information to non-partisan sources of information. He is opposed to the idea of single-payer. He thinks we should be able to buy insurance across state lines. He doesn't think that a bill will be ready by October 5.

A lot of people gave him grief. A couple people said that they want him to be a "maverick."

Then a high school girl stood up at the mic and read from a piece of paper in a lilting, sing-songy "I'm a cute high school girl" sort of way. She was there with several other family members, all with papers and index cards with notes on the same topic. She wanted to talk about "socialized medicine," she said.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

No, I did not take notes that fast. I just got home and Googled "socialism email" and found a copy of the insipid bulk email that's been flying around the internet for the past few years talking about why socialism doesn't work. At the end of the story, everyone gets an F because nobody has any incentive to work. I wanted to ask Socialism girl if she'd ever heard of a Montessori School. There are no grades, but somehow they manage to produce lots of kids who work hard, have good study habits, are intellectually curious and who love learning. I suspect most of them will be doing their own research on topics of a political nature, rather than doing a "rip & read" of some fictitious anecdotal bulk email at a town hall meeting. She got to the end of the paper, which one of her parents had undoubtedly given her, and this little future Palin/Bachmann Death Panelist got cheers and hollers of appreciation from the crowd.

By the time I left, the vitriol and anger toward the Senator seemed to be dissipating. One thing you can say about the Senator is that he has an Obama-esque calm. It's very hard not to like him. As I walked out, I had the distinct feeling that the people that went there to hate him walked out hating him a little less. This is a good thing. By not shrinking from the hardest of the hard-core adversaries, he made them sit in a room with him for two hours and see that he's actually not a bad guy, and he's really interested in helping people.

As I walked down the hall, I could still hear what was happening inside blaring from speakers on the wall outside the doors. One angry guy was saying something like, "You know, when you come here and talk, you sound like one of us." And then something about shooting moose, and wondering how can we trust him to be this way in Washington ... I wasn't thrilled about hearing a teabagger say that the guy I voted for sounded like one of them. But do they even know what they sound like, or even what they believe?

And it occurred to me what a strange situation this Democratic Senator is in. The Democrats in Alaska are frustrated because someone that they don't think is left enough gets shredded for being too left. And the people who are politically engaged and passionate are often those on the far right. There's no pleasing everyone. One of the people at the meeting had said, "I never felt like I had a Senator who spoke for me until now." And I thought of Ted Stevens, who was a convicted felon at the time of the 2008 election. Begich, Alaska's first Democratic senator in decades, defeated him by only a few thousand votes. As I stepped out into the cool rainy Alaskan evening, I wondered what Ted Stevens' town hall meeting might have been like.

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