A week or so ago Rep. Walt Minnick sent a representative to Weiser to discuss health care with local Democratic Party members. There was a good turnout of more than 20 people, but Minnick’s health care guy didn’t turn up. Instead, there was a young man who specialized in agriculture. He was very pleasant and tried to be helpful, but admitted he knew very little about health care. One thing he did know was, “Walt is his own man,” which prefaced each vague, noncommittal reply to questions.
Well, excuse us, but everyone knew that. Walt has been “his own man” since defeating former Republican Rep. Bill Sali in the 2008 election in Idaho’s First District. He has voted with Idaho’s Republican Congressmen so many times that some frustrated Democrats wonder if he means “their own man.” A young woman very active in the health care for all movement pointed out to the nice young man that Minnick got to Washington only because he happened to be running against a “religious psychopath” and could not count on the Republicans being so accommodating in 2010. Rep. Minnick must be his own man, she said, because he isn’t the Democratic Party’s man and he certainly is not her man in Washington.
The nice young man noted that Rep. Minnick is a businessman who knows all about the costs of employing people and paying taxes and the inefficiency of government run institutions. A man in the back said he had worked more than 30 years at NASA and it was definitely not inefficient. Studies showed that the U.S. Post Office was more efficient when it operated as a department of government than it is as a government owned independent corporation, he went on. He finished by pointing out that reliable, independent statistics show Medicare and Medicaid to be significantly more efficient than private health insurance companies. (I’ll throw in a note from Harper’s magazine’s index that private insurance firm’s profits increased nearly 500 percent from 2002 to 2008 while their coverage declined 40 percent.) Meanwhile, the earnest young woman passed around a hastily written petition demanding that Rep. Minnick give full support to the President’s plan, especially the government insurance option. Everyone signed the petition.
The nice young man reminded the gathering that “Walt is his own man” and said he would relate our concerns to him. He had not taken many notes, but perhaps he has a very good memory. He stuffed the earnest young woman’s petition into his file folder and was gone.
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