Health Care? More Like Health Scare

by Abraham Esses

I jumped into the back seat of my friend’s car in Deal, N.J. The time was approximately 5:45 p.m. Knowing we were late and expecting to find hundreds of people at the event, we sped down Route 36 on our way to the town hall meeting in Red Bank.

The meeting started at 7 p.m., but being that it was Aug. 26, smack in the middle of the nation’s health scare craze, we knew that arriving at 6:15 would not guarantee the four of us a spot in this meeting held at Red Bank Middle School. I stepped out of the car at 6:20 and was dumbfounded by the sight of at least 750 people protesting in a line at the entrance to the school.

As the night progressed hundreds turned into what seemed to be 2,000 protesters waiting for their voices to be heard. While I may boast that this was not my first foray into political activism, I regret to inform you that it was my first (and certainly my last) town hall meeting on health care reform.

Health care reform is a dilemma for teens. They continue to be the least covered age group; more than nine million teens in America are without health insurance, according to The Harvard Medical School. The same source released a report in September that found teens without health insurance have a 40 percent higher chance of dying than those with insurance.

While young people may be the most uninsured, they face a serious burden that no other age group faces: government debt. If passed, this reform can prove disastrous to future Americans as the debt previous generations left in place will prove to be extremely burdensome. Teens, especially those with the ability to vote, must decide whether their lack of insurance (which is something costly and dangerous) demands action or whether the price of reform abates the need for insurance.

Weeks before August 26, the media found itself in the midst of a battle over what these meetings actually represented. While some claimed that these meetings showed the public’s resentment of health care reform bills others pointed to videos of well, crazy people, who had no knowledge of the content within these bills. I was unable to believe the behavior of the people attending this town hall meeting and what they actually thought.

As the night progressed and the crowd grew, the words that came out of people’s mouths became more and more ridiculous. Hundreds of senior citizens chanted in unison, “Hands off Health Care!” while a group of middle-aged men explained to me how socialized medicine is reminiscent of Nazi Germany (all the while knowing that I was Jewish). One would think that after I explained that I attend a yeshiva they’d be more cautious selecting their analogies.

Before that night, I thought that the people in town hall meetings who depicted President Obama as Hitler (and his policies as Nazi-like) only represented an infinitesimal amount of the people at these events. Call it naiveté, but my hope in the average American citizen caused me to misjudge reality. Sign after sign, chant after chant, minute after minute, I started to think that this town hall meeting was actually about the resemblance between my current president and a man who wished to wipe out my very existence. What was ironic, however, was that these same people who considered President Obama a fascist also labeled him a socialist, even though these two philosophies are polar opposites.

After waiting two hours to enter the school (only 500 people were allowed in at a time) people seemed more and more upset over things that weren’t even included in the bill. Hundreds protested an imaginary provision in the bills that enabled the government to terminate senior citizens’ lives. The truth is “end of life counseling” means the government would pay for patients to discuss living wills and other end-of-life issues with their physicians and is purely optional. So no, grandma and grandpa will not be dying with the passing of any health care bill.

Many other ridiculous and incorrect claims (from both sides) found their way through the debate that night. While the few liberals that dared to attend this town hall meeting swore by preventative care, those on the far right were furious over supposed government funding of abortions and care for illegal immigrants. Yet according to many nonpartisan organizations (including the American Heart Association), preventative care does not save money nor will the government fund abortions or services for illegal immigrants.

The only thing more embarrassing than the lack of substantial arguments from these people was their decorum. As Representative Frank Pallone Jr. tried to explain that there would be no federal funding for abortions, a man in the back of the room proclaimed that the congressman should have been aborted and this vile comment was applauded.

Not soon after a woman in a wheelchair due to two autoimmune diseases told Congressman Pallone that she supports reform. The crowd, apparently relentless to anyone that supported the bill, heckled her until she was forced back to her seat practically in tears.

Were these the people that conservatives called “mainstream America”? I found myself unable to retain any more ridiculous comments these people were saying; I decided to leave the town hall meeting early. On our way home, my friend encapsulated the night in one statement, “I am actually ashamed to call myself a Republican tonight.”

Abraham Esses is a senior at the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn.

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