Just got back from Rep. Danny's Davis's 7th Congressional District Town Hall meeting. The 7th district contains some wealthy areas of the Chicago lakefront, the largely black working class West Side, white collar suburbs like Oak Park and River Forest and blue collar suburbs like Maywood, Forest Park and Bellwood.
There was not a teabagger in sight at Malcolm X College where the town hall was held. The college auditorium was full to overflowing. At the public discussion on health care, the vast majority of people spoke up for single payer or a public option. There were 3 or 4 opponents of any government run health care options, but they were polite and respectful. There were heart rending stories of lost lives, lost homes and lost jobs because of health care issues.
The West Side of Chicago has health care stats worse than some 3rd countries even though it lies in the shadow of one of the USA's biggest medical complexes. But West Siders are a tough bunch and the many community organizations, individual volunteers and non-profits that service the community are doing their best to "keep hope alive."
It's nice to live in a district with so many sensible people. Incidently, Abraham Lincoln represented the 7th Congressional District back in the days when Republicans still included decent progressive minded people.
There was some discussion of political tactics and strategy. Rep. Davis said flatly that he would vote for whatever proposal Barack Obama finally signs on to. Davis is a long time supporter of single payer. He also supports the public option as a reform that could be won now.
When questioned about about his flat declaration that he would ultimately support ObamaCare no matter what form it took, Danny said that if he didn't,"My constituents would beat the hell out of me and I couldn't take a beating like that." Truth be told, he's probably right.
But despite the discussion on tactics and strategy to get a health care reform bill passed, there was virtually no discussion of how we transition to a universal care system. The transition between our current broken health care system to a universal system could be a rough one.
For one thing, we have a severe shortage of primary care physicians because of our irrational way of training doctors. We leave graduating docs with a huge debt that is hard to pay off unless they go into a lucrative high paying specialty.
Another danger is replicating what happened in the former Soviet Union after they threw out communism. The corrupt oligarchy simply moved into the newly privatized sections of the economy and pulled off a grand heist at the expense of the working class people.
I can easily see the corrupt oligarchy of our insurance and pharmaceutical companies getting into our publicly funded health care to to loot it in a similar fashion.
All you have to do is look at the Pentagon to see how that works already. And speaking of the Pentagon, if we are serious about health care we need to give up our budget-busting global empire starting with our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's time to stop trying to rule the world and start spending that money on more useful things like health care.
Passing the law is the easiest part. The hard part begins the day after it is signed.