Obama to Defend Health-Care Plan at Town Hall After Disruptions

By Kristin Jensen

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will defend his efforts to overhaul the U.S. health-care system at a town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, today after a series of protests met his fellow Democrats in recent days.

Democratic members of the House and Senate who have returned to their home districts have encountered protesters holding signs and screaming slogans such as “just say no” to the party’s health-care plan. The Democratic National Committee has accused Republicans of orchestrating the disruptions.

Obama and some Democrats in Congress are pushing plans that would offer the option to purchase health insurance from a government-run program, while requiring all Americans to get coverage and putting new restrictions on insurers. Republicans say the effort will increase costs and limit choices for care.

“We expect that there will be a vigorous debate, as there have been at plenty of town halls that President Obama has had,” White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters yesterday. “We look forward to it.”

About 1,800 people will attend the event in a local high school, with most of the tickets available to the public, Burton said. Obama will focus on issues such as how the new law would prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions, Burton said.

House, Senate Leave

The House of Representatives left Washington on July 31 for a five-week recess after putting off a vote on legislation until September. The Senate began its recess on Aug. 7 with one of the two committees working on the issue still struggling to find a bipartisan compromise.

House and Senate lawmakers are grappling with issues such as whether to create the government-run health-care plan, which would compete with private insurers, whether to mandate that employers offer coverage to their workers, and how to pay for a plan that may cost $1 trillion over 10 years.

Democrats are aiming to cover millions of uninsured Americans while reducing health-care costs that make up about a sixth of the nation’s economy. The effort to persuade voters that they are on the right track has been complicated by polls showing that Americans increasingly disapprove of the changes.

“The Republicans and the Democrats are going to spend an awful lot of money” trying to persuade voters during August, Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University polling institute, told reporters last week in Washington. “There’s this gigantic battle.”

‘Manufacturing’ Outrage

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs last week accused a group opposing the health-care overhaul plan of disrupting town-hall meetings by “manufacturing” outrage. And the top two Democrats in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer, wrote a column yesterday in USA Today decrying the disruptions.

“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American,” wrote Hoyer and Pelosi, of California.

Burton yesterday said he believes there’s “a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America” and Obama “encourages debate.”

Even so, “if you just want to come to a town hall so you can disrupt, so that you can scream over another person, he doesn’t think that’s productive,” Burton said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@bloomberg.net