The House is home on recess this week, and most House Republicans are running scared from their constituents’ anger over Trumpcare. A few Republicans are trying to have it both ways—giving the impression of meeting with the public while tightly controlling who can talk to them and how. But even that isn’t working out so well for them, as New York’s Elise Stefanik and Iowa’s Rod Blum discovered Monday.
Blum went from walking out on an interview with a local television news reporter straight into a town hall “where most of the prescreened audience screamed at him,” the Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe reports.
“This bill, Trumpcare — whatever you want to call it — is about the individual market only,” he said. “That’s 12,000 people in my district. Twelve thousand people in my district. So if you’re in the group health insurance program through your employers, if you’re getting your insurance through the group health insurance, nothing changes.”
“That’s not true! That’s not true!” people screamed from the bleachers, waving the red sheets.
“If you’re getting your insurance through Medicare, nothing’s going to change. Nothing’s going to change,” Blum said. “If you’re currently getting your health insurance through Medicaid nothing’s going to –”
The crowd drowned him out as he finished his sentence.
In Plattsburgh, New York, Elise Stefanik appeared before an audience of only 100 as she was taped by a local PBS station. But despite the small audience and more formal setting, with a reporter moderating the event and trying to keep the audience in check, she still faced overt anger.
When Stefanik answered a question about tax cuts for the wealthy in the Trumpcare bill by talking about Obamacare and taxes:
Some in the crowd seemed to think Stefanik was dodging the question. They started heckling and Hallock tried to rein them in. “Okay folks, let’s keep this in check, okay?” he said. [...]
No one in the town hall meeting other than Stefanik had anything good to say about the bill. Nina Matteau, a breast cancer survivor, said the GOP plan includes loopholes that threaten people with pre-existing conditions. “Can you explain how this constitutes better health care at lower premiums as promised?” Matteau asked.
Stefanik replied with the official Paul Ryan-approved talking point that Trumpcare wouldn’t allow insurers to reject people because of pre-existing conditions. She didn’t, of course, mention that insurers could charge people with pre-existing conditions whatever huge sums they wanted. Stefanik’s audience does not seem to have bought her claims, on that or other aspects of the healthcare bill. One audience member drew applause by challenging her claims of “flexibility,” saying “That is a cut to the services in New York state. Because it is an enormous financial cut. There’s no other way around it, you can’t put a spin on it,” North Country Public Radio’s Zach Hirsch reports.
Come to think of it, “you can’t put a spin on it” is turning out to be a great description of the entire Trumpcare bill. No wonder so few House Republicans want to face their constituents.