Democrats faced voters’ outrage

I was one of the people who spoke at last week’s town hall meeting in Columbus that our congressman, Pat Tiberi, declined to attend. And the experience of sharing my story about the difficulties of getting health insurance as a selfemployed person with a group of 1,200 of Tiberi’s constituents reminded me of meetings leading up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Back then, it was Democratic representatives who were facing difficult meetings with constituents who were opposed to their positions.

Those protesters were often quite confrontational. I remember the packed room for Sen. Sherrod Brown’s meeting with constituents at the Wexner Medical Center, and the massive demonstration in front of then-Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy’s office. That was the protest in which opponents of the law spit upon and threw money at a supporter with Parkinson’s disease who sat down in front of them.

As I look back on that time, what strikes me is the courage those Democratic lawmakers showed. They faced those crowds, and they voted for the Affordable Care Act, because they knew it would bring health insurance to millions of Americans. They knew that their support for the ACA could end their political careers, and, in the case of Kilroy, it likely did. But they had the courage to support health insurance for Americans in spite of those political hazards.

The contrast this year could hardly be more stark. Now, Republicans like Tiberi and U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers, along with Sen. Rob Portman, want to take away health insurance from millions of Americans, and they refuse to hold town halls to discuss the issue.

In one case, constituents who had purchased tickets were even blocked from attending a dinner where Portman was speaking. There’s only one word I can think of to describe their actions: cowardly.

Bill Wood Westerville