By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-11-09 20:50:50 | Word Count: 538
The health care reform bill - all 1,990 pages of it - came to Elm Grove on Saturday, and the overwhelming sentiment from constituents of Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner who gathered at the village hall was clear: No thanks.
More than 200 people packed the boardroom and overflowed into the hallway at Elm Grove Village Hall to weigh in on the proposal and other federal issues in an afternoon meeting held by Sensenbrenner. Sitting behind a two-sided printout of the bill that measured more than 4 inches high, Sensenbrenner fielded questions and comments from residents of his congressional district.
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"This is not about health care - this is about control of our lives," Valerie Linton of Sussex told the crowd.
One by one, residents of the largely Republican district blasted the reform bill crafted by Democrats.
"If this is so great, why don't the Congress people go into the plan?" asked J.F. Rennebohm of Elm Grove.
Some in the crowd said they were worried about the debt being incurred by the federal government and the costs it would impose on future generations of Americans.
Sensenbrenner, who held a similar town hall meeting attended by about 30 people in Brown Deer earlier in the day, said the bill would put the country on the path to health care rationing.
"We should not put some bureaucrat between a patient and their physician," Sensenbrenner told the audience.
Supporters of the health care reform legislation were rare, with only two speaking in favor of it during the hour-and-a-half meeting. One man carried a sign that read, "Health Insurance Reform Now," but he did not speak to the group.
Told of the strong turnout and opposition to the health care reform measure at Saturday's meeting, Mike Tate, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said "It must be Halloween" because Sensenbrenner and the industry were scaring people about what health insurance reform means.
"The Democratic Congress is hard at work putting together a proposal that will finally make health insurance a reality for people that are uninsured and make better coverage a reality for those that are underinsured," Tate said.
Before the meeting, Sensenbrenner delivered a printout of the hefty bill to the Elm Grove Library for perusal by constituents.
In an interview, Sensenbrenner called the health care reform bill "a government takeover of health insurance." He said the public option included in it probably would lead employers to stop offering health insurance to workers.
"I'm very, very fearful that it will encourage employers to drop their employee health insurance programs and pay an 8% tax that is levied on those employers that do not provide health insurance, because most employer-provided health insurance costs a lot more than 8% of payroll," Sensenbrenner said. "And by dumping their employees into the government option, they can improve the bottom line."
