APPOMATTOX — Rep. Tom Perriello’s 21st and final town hall meeting of August brought out a respectful crowd Monday night that nevertheless disagreed with many of the reforms proposed in health care legislation.
Speakers criticized waste in the current Medicare system and controls on future efforts by hospitals and insurance companies. Others criticized government spending on stimulus programs and bailouts.
A woman, speaking early in the meeting about wasted funds, displayed two bras for breast cancer patients that she said Medicare paid $833 to provide. “You can go to Victoria’s Secret and get two bras for $70,” she said as the audience chuckled.
Perriello acknowledged there is waste in the Medicare system, and said the Congressional Budget Office has tracked down $500 million of it.
More waste would have been caught, Perriello said, but both political parties had been afraid the other party would run TV ads accusing them of robbing seniors of health care coverage.
Several speakers demanded to know whether Perriello was going to vote for the health care reform bill.
“I have been and I remain a ‘no’ on the bill,” Perriello said, “but I’m going to be upfront, I really want to get to a ‘yes.’”
Congress will work during September on refining three House bills on health care and two Senate bills into single measures.
Perriello said he thought the current system, in which private health insurance plans are supporting Medicare, uninsured people and other government-funded care, “is bankrupting a lot of middle-class families and a lot of small-business owners.”
“It is driving up the deficit” in the federal budget, he said.
Other speakers criticized the federal stimulus package and said government has too big a role in people’s lives.
Paul Coviello, of Appomattox, said he watched a YouTube video that showed President Obama in Northern Virginia “saying dissent in this country was the result of work of the Republican Party, telling us in effect to shut up and get out of the way.
“Congressman, that is disgusting,” Coviello said.
Coviello also said churches and charitable institutions are able to take care of needy people and that role “is not the legitimate purview of the government.”
“What we need you to do is get the federal government out of our way,” Coviello said as several people in the audience stood and cheered.
“I can tell you, for my part, I don’t want help educating my children, I don’t want food, I don’t want clothing, I don’t want a down payment for my cars,” he said, referring to government social programs and the use of federal stimulus funds to get clunker cars off the road.
Such programs “are patently un-American and ungodly and it has got to stop, and we need you to speak for us,” Coviello said.
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