Over 7,200 Listen in to Childers' "Tele-Town Hall"

One day after fellow Blue Dog Democrat Gene Taylor held a town hall meeting on the coast, Representative Travis Childers held his own forum about health care reform … over the phone. MPB’s Cari Gervin listened in.

Childers’ staff said the First District Representative scheduled a conference call instead holding a town hall meeting in person so that more people would be able to attend.

At Representative Gene Taylor’s meeting Monday, for example, over a thousand people crammed the room and hundreds more reportedly were turned away.

And at the end of Childers’ hour-long conference call, his staff said that more than 7,200 people had dialed in – even though some people had technical difficulties getting connected and hearing the other callers.

But Childers’ staff wouldn’t discuss the other obvious benefit of the "tele-town hall" – prescreening the calls. It certainly cut out a lot of the rancor seen at other congressional forums on health care, including Taylor’s.

That’s not to say all the questions were easy. People asked about the so-called “death panels” – Childers called them a myth – and whether health care reform would pay for abortions or insure illegal aliens – Childers doesn’t support either idea.

But most of the questions were personal ones from people like Claire from Hernando.

“I have a pre-existing condition from cancer 10 years ago – still cannot get health insurance.”

Claire wanted to know if the proposed health care reform would prevent discrimination from that pre-existing condition, even though she falls into a high income bracket.

Childers said it would.

“Claire, you make, [sigh] you make a perfect case for, you know, what I said earlier about – insurance companies have to stop penalizing people who have a pre-existing illness or pre-existing disease.”

This was point Childers stressed again and again – although he said he wants insurance companies to, quote, “step up,” and change their policies, instead of a mandate via public option health insurance.

Childers does not support the health care reform legislation currently before the House, but he does think reform is needed. He said health insurance is currently too expensive, but the proposed legislation will also cost too much.

For MPB News, I’m Cari Gervin.