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Under media radar, health care reform ground war rages

July 28, 2009 —  It took less than a minute, after all the panelists had made their spiels and the audience was invited to ask questions at US Rep. John Lewis’ town meeting on health care Monday morning at Ebenezer Baptist Church, for a line to form from the microphone all the way up the aisle to the vestibule.

“I’ve met personally with some of you in my office, and I’ve met with some of you at the grocery store and Home Depot,” the Democratic Atlanta congressman told the audience of between more than 300. “I’ve seen some of you on the train; you’ve stopped me on the street and in restaurants.... It’s okay. You need to have your say. We need to have a discussion.”

As the quickly-formed line at the microphone attested, there were still plenty who wanted to join that discussion.

There was the woman who’d been told by her insurance company that donating a kidney qualified as a pre-existing condition. There was the woman convinced the bill would mandate “dying with dignity” for her 77-year-old mother. There was the accountant who contested the numbers used by proponents of the House health care plan, the doctor who pleaded for the creation of more primary health care centers, the young man who didn’t have health insurance and didn’t want to be forced to get it.

There was as much diversity of opinion as there was of ethnicity in this meeting at the home church of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“This plan, this proposal, is not perfect. It’s not a cure-all, it’s not a panacea, it’s a major step down a long road,” Lewis said.

Nothing in this diversity of voices gave any clear indications of how the health care reform battle will be resolved in Washington. But as the planned two-hour session went on for an additional half hour, with people still waiting to speak at the end, a couple of key differences with the health care reform debate of 1993 became clear.

One is the intensity of engagement on both sides of the political spectrum. Those who criticized the health care reform plan from the right – that is, those opposed to any form of nationally-directed, universal health care – were probably the most vociferous: There were some shouts from the back of the room and a few questioners who refused to give up the microphone.

 But by a considerable margin, they were outnumbered by those who criticized the current plan from the left – that is, those who wanted nothing short of a single-payer health care system, without the insurance companies. And they argued their points just as passionately, if not as loudly.

The balance of opinion was different Saturday at a town hall in Rome led by US Rep. Phil Gingrey, with a panel just as opposed to the Obama administration’s plans as the one at Ebeneezer was for it. But here, too, there were significant differences of opinion. 

In 1993, liberals favored Hillarycare, though many had reservations, but the passion came mostly from its conservative opponents. That doesn’t seem to be the case in 2009.

If this point has not been so widely noted it may be because of the other, and very striking, difference between this year and 1993. Media coverage of events like this may never have been much to write home about, but the Atlanta town hall was covered by a crew from one local television station, which took a shot of the opening remarks and moved on, one newspaper photographer, and this reporter, who stayed until the end.

This is not an isolated lapse in coverage. The dramatic cutbacks in the staffs of local newspaper, radio and television staffs means that a lot of the ground war over health care reform simply isn’t being covered this year. Meanwhile, network shows have become far more fixated with stories like the Henry Louis Gates affair – CBS Evening News led Monday night with release of the 911 tape by the Cambridge Police Department, and Michael Jackson’s death, details of which still take precedence over the health care reform story a month after it happened.

Battles fought in the darkness still have significance, however, and summer wears on, the one over health care reform has been joined in earnest.