Crowds turn out for Delray Beach town hall on healthcare reform

The key to a orderly town hall meeting, it seems, is a closed door. The Florida Alliance for Retired Americans turned its annual healthcare forum into a ticketed event mostly for its members, ensuring a friendly audience for U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings of Miramar and Robert Wexler of Boca Raton.

``The seniors and the veterans built this country, and no one is going to come in here, disrupt us and embarrass us or take away our democracy,'' said Tony Fransetta, president of the liberal, union-affiliated group.

But outside the closed doors of the South County Civic Center was the hollering, finger-pointing and sign-waving that has defined public meetings on health care this month as Congress contemplates sweeping reforms.

For unions, a messy bargain

The Net roots is up in arms about the Senate's version of health-care reform, with many rooters demanding it be voted down. The liberal establishmentarians lament the compromises they were compelled to accept but support the bill's passage. In between the two, indignant and stuck, is organized labor.

``There's an excise tax on policies, but there's no public option to hold down the cost of those policies,'' says Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers. ``There's no Medicare buy-in, no pay-or-play mandate for employers. There's no Canadian reimportation to hold down drug costs, on the grounds of `safety.' No one gets sick from Canadian reimported drugs,'' adds Gerard, who is Canadian. ``I know a guy who got sick from a Chinese-made ingredient in an American drug, but there's no restriction on Chinese drug imports.''

Gerard is hardly alone in his criticisms. Labor believes, rightly, that the cost controls in the Senate bill come chiefly from insurance policy holders (among them, labor's members

Who's afraid of the free market?

As everybody knows, the two biggest battles on Capitol Hill -- reforming healthcare and regulating Wall Street -- have unleashed massive campaigns from the enemies of free markets.

The Obama administration and congressional liberals, right? Guess again.

It's health insurers and big banks that are fighting against having their products displayed on open markets, where buyers might be able to find better (and more comprehensible) deals, or are resisting reforms that would open those markets to more competition. Neither the healthcare industry nor Wall Street banking is a notably competitive sector these days. Indeed, both are becoming less competitive. And they want to keep things that way.

Quiet inside, conflict outside at Delray Beach healthcare forum

This was not the rowdy town hall meeting on healthcare that Americans have come to expect this summer.

A lone heckler left after a sheriff's deputy told him to cut it out. The audience listened quietly to a PowerPoint presentation on ``single-payer'' healthcare. And the two South Florida congressmen on stage received standing ovations.

The key to an orderly town hall meeting, it seems, is a closed door. The Florida Alliance for Retired Americans turned its annual healthcare forum into a ticketed event mostly for its members, ensuring a friendly audience for Democratic U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings of Miramar and Robert Wexler of Boca Raton.

Try single-payer

Try single-payer system

Re the Oct. 6 article Healthcare reform proposal on insurance exchanges was tried in Florida: My question is: Why would be try it again? The current proposal would require all Americans to purchase a flawed product: private health insurance, which wastes one-third of Americans' health dollars on nonsensical administration, huge profits and exorbitant executive pay.