Anger and frustration over Trumpcare at Louisiana town hall meeting
By
Tom Hall
1 July 2017
Anger over Trumpcare boiled over Friday at a town hall meeting held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy.
While the official topic of the meeting was flood recovery, in the aftermath of last summer’s historic floods in Baton Rouge, the focus of most of the attendees was on the cuts to federal health care spending and the effective abolition of Medicaid as an entitlement program in the bill drafted in secret by Cassidy’s fellow Republicans and unveiled last week.
The intense and widespread anger over the mounting attack on health care was reflected in the turnout for the meeting. A multi-racial crowd of some 300 workers, retirees and middle-class people pressed the reluctant senator for answers about the Trump administration’s health care bills that are working their way through Congress.
Cassidy has been tabbed as one of the Republicans in the Senate, where the party holds a narrow two-vote majority, who might decide to vote against the so-called “Better Care Reconciliation Act.” Various liberal protest groups have promoted the illusion that Cassidy can be induced through popular pressure to “fulfill his Hippocratic Oath” (Cassidy is a former medical doctor) and oppose the bill. The senator, apparently eager not to evoke popular outrage, has made some muted criticisms of certain aspects of the bill, such as language regarding premiums for people with pre-existing conditions.
Whatever his tactical disagreements with the Senate bill may or may not be (he declined to say explicitly whether he supported or opposed the bill during yesterday’s town hall), Cassidy fully supports the assault on access to health care. During the 2014 Senate race,…