Sanders plans meetings on health-care reform
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By STEPHANIE M. PETERS STAFF WRITER - Published: August 13, 2009
When Sen. Bernard Sanders comes to Rutland on Saturday morning for the first of three town hall-style meetings planned for the August congressional recess, he will be greeted by opponents of major health care reform.
It's almost to be expected, given the emotion-laden shouting matches that have broken out at similar meetings around the country in the past few days.
However, Sanders and Jon Wallace, a local organizer for the Vermont Tea Party movement who's been building awareness for the events in recent weeks, said they are hopeful the meetings will take a different tenor in Vermont. Wallace would rather that opponents ask pointed questions that force Sanders to respond. The senator, meanwhile, said he doesn't think the demonstrations that have happened around the country are in keeping with Vermont's town meeting values.
"I have done hundreds of town meetings," Sanders said in a phone interview Wednesday. "It's my job to listen to people, without exception. Some agree with me, some disagree. I believe that, unlike other places in the country, I'm confident that in Vermont – which in many ways is known as the home of the town meeting – we essentially treat each other with respect."
Sanders is scheduled to hold a 9:30 a.m. breakfast at the Unitarian Universalist Church on West Street before beginning to field questions from the audience at 10 a.m. Afterward, he'll head to Arlington, where he'll sponsor a 12:30 p.m. barbecue at The Pavilion at the Arlington Recreation Park, followed by a 1 p.m. question-and-answer session. A third meeting will be held in Peacham on Aug. 23.
While Wallace said he didn't know what kind of turnout to expect from health care reform opponents, he has heard people are planning to come from all over the state to get Sanders' ear.
"People are angry," he said. "They're losing their jobs, the money they end up with at the end of the year is decreasing and on this issue it's hard to tell what is fact and what is fiction, and it's coming from both sides of the aisle."
Although he's not entirely sure what the plan entails, Wallace said he's opposed to the way health care reform has been rushed along this summer, describing it as a "debate that needs to happen over a longer period of time."
Health care isn't the only subject on Sanders' agenda for the meetings. He said he also hopes to touch on veterans' benefits, the dairy crisis, global warming and how Congress can work to change the culture of corporate greed on Wall Street, although he knows public confusion about what, exactly, the proposed health care reform entails could give rise to enough questions to dominate the forum.
"One of the things that has added an element to the confusion is that … there are five separate committees (between the House and the Senate) working on health care, as well as the Obama administration, and there is no one single bill," he said.
As a member of the Senate's health committee, Sanders has advocated for one of the many reform variables still in play – a single-payer or public option he said he'd like to see resemble Medicare.
"I'd like to see every American given the option – and option really is the important word here – of having a Medicare-type program to choose from in addition to private options," he said. He said he sees the choice as being important for a number of reasons, including as a means to keep private health insurance companies "honest."
"The point here in terms of health care is that, according to virtually all the economists out there, if we don't get a handle on health care costs in this country, soon people are going to be paying 50 percent of their income toward health care. That's clearly unsustainable."
stephanie.peters@rutlandherald.com
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