Sparks Fly at Dan Maffei’s Health Care Town Hall

Dan Maffei needs to borrow the White House’s media team to set up his next town hall meeting. Nothing like this ever happens to President Obama. On one side were hard workers with wallets, on the other side were those who want the hard workers to open their wallets. These people were feisty!

U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei had to rely on police to restore order as the two extremes in the national health care reform debate collided Monday night in a packed Syracuse school auditorium.

Minutes after Maffei’s town hall meeting on health care began, a graduate student from Albany interrupted the congressman and shouted for Maffei to explain why he isn’t supporting a bill that would establish a single-payer government health care system.

“I didn’t come here to listen to you,” another man in the crowd angrily yelled as Syracuse police escorted Peter LaVenia out of Lincoln Middle School.

For Maffei, the evening didn’t get much easier.

Hecklers, opposed to expanding taxpayer-funded health programs, repeatedly drowned out a panel of New York health care experts whom Maffei asked to discuss how America should provide insurance to 47 million uninsured people and cut the cost of health care.

I don’t know why the wallet grabbers are so upset with Rep. Maffei. They know he’s going to choose a side – whatever side Nancy Pelosi tells him to choose. And we all know whose side she’s on.

I wanted to go to the meeting but by the time we had dinner with the kids we missed it. I would have asked a simple three part question: Did you read the energy bill or the stimulus bill before voting for either one? If not, why not? Will you vote for a health care bill without reading it?

Not that I don’t already know the answer.