Woodstock CT Café

The Daily Kos articles on last night’s meeting: article 1 and article 2 . We are getting traffic from the Daily Kos and CCAG. Thanks to CCAG and KOS.

Hi there!  It was nice meeting you last night, I just wanted to send you a quick note to say that I posted the videos on our site.  More are in our YouTube channel:  http://www.youtube.com/user/CCAGOnline

My brief recap and some highlight videos from last night:  http://ccag.net/content/woodstock-health-care-forum

These are the two best videos, IMO: 
1.  While explaining her health care situation, and how her Dr. is reluctant to order an MRI because her private insurance plan hasn’t been covering them, cancer-survivor Judith Stein is interrupted by a heckler who tells her to “switch”.  She promptly puts him in is place. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vucb0jBojZM

2.  The Woodstock RTC Secretary responds to Jenny Bass’ story by saying that the reason he doesn’t have any diseases is because he takes care of himself.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ_JGHERZhg

Online Organizer / CCAG

A video recording of the meeting can be found at www.ccag.net . Listen to Bill Sowka after the Jenny Bass statement.

by Meghan

Yes, you have to compliment Mr. Courtney for not taking the plan offered to Congress. What he neglected to mention is that he is still compensated the cash value of the plan. He can then put it toward a plan of his choice.

I have to agree with Mr. Sowka. Emotions were the attempted highlight of the evening. I also have to agree with his position of taking charge of your own health before expecting the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Ms. Bass related the heart attack suffered by her sister in law. It was during her pregnancy and it caused her to mis-carry the baby. That is sad and not easy to suffer through. Knowing that, did the doctor really think that trying to have another child was a wise move? She lost the second child also. Did she visit the doctor prior to her first pregnancy and have a thorough check up? They may have found the heart problem early enough to stop future problems.

Ms. Stein related that a woman on Medicare visiting family in another state had a health problem that caused her a lot of grief after the fact. She related that the woman had the wrong selection of Medicare and she wasn’t covered for all of the problems that she encountered. She said that the people she dealt with had complaints about health issues but all of them were on government run Medicare. She didn’t say that if that woman had visited her doctor for regular check ups they may have found the underlying cause of her problem. She didn’t explain that there are provisions in Medicare that allow for you to go out of plan for vacation travel. She didn’t mention that the paper work and sign up procedure for Medicare is a nightmare and it is her office that should clear these things up. She didn’t mention that at 65 you have no real option except Medicare.

The problems that exist in the insurance and health care fields are there but we shouldn’t be tossing out the existing system and replacing it with a untested government run one. One that in the end will creating untold expenses for our children.

Mr. Sowka has valid points, the ones that really should be the pillars upon which the system can begin the repair process. He enlightened me on the thugs that were placed around the room, I wondered who they were? I was wondering, after reading his post, what do the unions have to gain from supporting this farce of a plan? They do nothing for nothing do they? As luck would have it an email just showed up explaining that the union members are exempt from joining the mandatory plan. Being exempt will make being a member of a union more desirable, more members, more money for the unions. It will mean more unionization of business’ which will mean more business’ going out, closing. I for one could not afford to have a union in my place, I would have to fold.

Overall it was a fair meeting that didn’t really inform on specifics but it did let people think that their opinions were heard. All I heard was that Mr. Courtney has his mind made up and will stand behind the plan, if for no other reason he needs the future support of the DNC.

“We hope no schools have to close, but realistically, some schools will close this fall.”
“The decision to close actually rests with local school officials.”
“I’m dealing first and foremost as a parent. I want to keep my children safe and keep them learning.”
“School districts should use common sense. If you have one child sick, that’s one thing. If you have a whole host of children getting sick, that’s another,”
“Use common sense and encourage children to vigorously wash their hands several times a day and take other safety precautions.”
“Basically, this will be a tiered response. If there’s a handful of children at a school who might be sick, we want the parents to keep them home. If the numbers escalate dramatically, then we might have to close the schools.”
“The vaccine will be available by mid-October and that (he) wants schools to be principal sites for getting the shots.”
“The administration wants to avoid the chaos of last spring, when more than 700 schools in half the states closed their doors. There are about 132,000 public and private schools in the U.S.”
Duncan said at a swine flu summit last month that closing a school should be “a last resort, not a first resort.”
‘Every winter, regular flu outbreaks prompt a relatively small number of schools to close for a few days because of high absenteeism among students or staff.’
States and school districts should be preparing for the possibility of mass vaccinations.
Teachers should make plans to keep kids learning when schools do close.

Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education) was interviewed Friday on CBS’s The Early Show

by Bill Sowka

Thanks for posting Becki. Great pictures.

On Thursday August 6 the notorious “Healthcare Townhall Meeting” roadshow came to Woodstock, being sponsored by the Woodstock Democratic Town Committee and featured Congressman Joseph Courtney of the Connecticut 2nd District. Myself and several other WRTC members were in attendance. The extent of turnout was striking, despite that no communication of this event was provided by the WDTC or by Mr. Courtney. In fact, there was no mention of this meeting on Mr. Courtney’s website and when I called his Norwich office to inquire why this was not communicated, the aide could not articulate a reasonable response. I found this lack of communication to be a little startling, undemocratic, and undermining of a fair representative process. I spoke to several people from area towns who voiced the same concern. Is it no wonder then that tensions run high in these meetings and ironically, the people complaining about this tension are the ones who created it. In fact, even the Villager newspaper, our local source for newspaper information, found out just that morning. Regardless, people obviously found out one way or another and the Woodstock Academy cafeteria filled to the brim. Mr. Kaeding and Marjorie Wholean did a fine job at crowd control and while tensions were obviously high and polarization quite noticeable, disruption was kept at a minimum. It was obvious though, that, as being reported, union thugs were present and squelched any kind of outburst dissenting by those oppose the Democratic style of healthcare takeover. Kudos to all for avoiding any YouTube moments.

After Mr.Courtney’s brief opening remarks, he introduced attorney Judith Stein, founder and Executive Director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Willimantic. She gave us some historical background on Medicare and the honorable service she has done on its behalf. She was a very passionate, sincere person, but what disturbed me about her comments were that while she seemed to be reasonably intelligent, her take on the issue was not so much informational or substantiative, but rather, she began to emotionalize the whole issue by personalizing it and raising her voice to an irritating and pleaful pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

See the pictures below taken by Becki.

I don’t think too many people (in Woodstock) knew about a Health Care Town Hall meeting being held this evening at Woodstock Academy. We heard about it from ‘Dbrownie’ yesterday and couldn’t find any official verification, so we were left hanging in the wind. We did finally hear about it from a verifiable source and that’s when we posted the notice.

So, I went to see what was up. The notice about the event noted a time frame of 6-7 PM, but the actual time frame was 6:30 to 8:00 PM. When I arrived just before six, there were not too many cars around. I had parked in front, so can’t speak for the rear parking lot. About ten of us were slowly walking toward the Academy buildings. The doors of the library and the gymnasium/auditorium were locked. There weren’t any helpful signs about either. Someone mentioned that it was to be held in the student commons, so we headed for the cafeteria. Once inside the building, there were signs pointing the way to the commons.

As we arrived, we were asked to sign in and put on name tags… a little odd, but effective for constructing a contact data base for the Woodstock DTC and getting a sense of where people were from. Margie Wholean and Jim Kaeding were busy with last minute organization details, pressing the flesh and generally trying to stay on top of the ever increasing numbers of people arriving for the meeting. One poster-sized sign was leaned against the wall of the hallway, having been confiscated from an energetic attendee. There was an orchestrated effort underway to minimize the possible intentional interruption of the meeting – a phenomenon, occurring fairly regularly nationwide. I learned later from Margie that they hadn’t put out a huge notification of the meeting in an attempt to minimize that possibility… that’s why none of us could find reference or notice of the meeting.

I was impressed by how many people came to this meeting that nobody knew about. By the time Courtney arrived there were easily 200 people in the room. An additional eighty or so arrived after Joe started speaking. I have to say, it was a little unnerving to see so many people at a Woodstock meeting that I didn’t know!!! My best guess is that no more than 15% of the 270-300 attendees were from Woodstock (the Norwich Bull has reported 350 attendees). Certainly there were a number of people that came from all over the Second District to support Joe. There were a decent number of Woodstockers from the DTC. But there were a whole lot of people that were from all manner of hill a dale in Connecticut. They were from Waterford, New London, Vernon, Guilford, Somers, Vernon, Moosup, Eastford, Scotland, Ashford… just to name the ones I can remember. Read the rest of this entry »

The crowd still assembling

More of the crowd

Turn page and see Jim Kaeding with Joe Courtney

Read the rest of this entry »