Another Town Hall Meeting, Another Illustration of Obama's Challenge

WINDSOR, Colo. The town hall meeting began with angry protests over an absent congresswoman and a near-confrontation between two men sharply divided over the state of the nation's health-care system. It ended nearly two hours later, with nothing close to a consensus and the challenges for President Obama all the more evident.

The meeting came just as the White House was announcing that Obama will speak to a joint session of Congress next week, an effort to seize control of a debate that has been sliding away from the president for the past two months. White House officials hope the address will mark a turning point in the debate and act as a spur to Congress to pass a bill by the end of year.

Had the White House sent emissaries to the Windsor Recreation Center on Wednesday afternoon, they would have come away with a deeper belief that the American system of health care is badly in need of repair. From the stories told by those in the audience, there is nothing equitable in the capricious way the current insurance system treats people with similar diseases.

But those White House officials, had they been in Windsor, might also have emerged with something bordering on despair at the schism that now exists over such a personal issue. As one man in the audience put it, without any hyperbole, health care is "probably the most divisive issue in this country since the Vietnam War."

In Windsor, as at many of the town halls this summer, opponents of the bills before Congress far outnumbered supporters. Their criticisms combined opposition to Obama's agenda, worry about how changes might affect their own health care, confusion over exactly what is in the legislation, and hostility toward what they see as government encroachment on their freedoms.

A registered nurse charged that there would be "legal genocide" if health-care reform passes -- and questioned whether Obama was born in the United States. Other opponents complained of a loss of individual freedom they saw as inherent in the reforms. There were angry denunciations of the drain on the system from "illegal aliens." And throughout the nearly two hours, there were repeated expressions of distrust of the government.

Rep. Betsy Markey, a first-term Democrat in what has been a reliably Republican district, was supposed to be at the meeting but at that last minute said she was unable to attend. In her place, two aides acted as spear catchers as they skillfully guided the discussion and kept the conversation generally civil, if not always quiet.

When one member of the audience asked Markey's district director, Ken Bennett, what he would report back from the meeting, he said, among other things, the sense of fear people have about changes in the system.

"It's not fear that we have," Nancy Winters told him. "It's mistrust. Don't tell her we're afraid. We don't trust them. There is an agenda with this administration."

But supporters of reforming the system, while outnumbered, were not shy in arguing for change. Paul Hill said his wife is a breast cancer survivor who was fired by a small business because the premiums for her insurance became more than the company could bear. "You're being conned by the insurance industry," he said.

Ellen Wheeler told the audience that her daughter suffers from a disease. If her son-in-law loses his health insurance, she said, "They will be destitute. It won't take any time at all. She needs something. Do you want them to be on welfare? That's not what any of us want. Talk about a government-run program."

The long public debate over the legislation has hardened the lines between Democrats and Republicans, legislators and citizens alike. But two Colorado Democrats say they will return to Washington with an even greater determination to pass a reform bill this year.

Michael Bennet, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate in January and who faces a difficult election in 2010, said, "I was committed going in, but I feel more compelled on it because I've heard story after story after story of families having to endure a set of choices that nobody should have to."

Bennet favors a bill that is a "substantial departure from the status quo," not incremental change. But that bill, he said, must recognize the public's legitimate concerns about the deficit and national debt and must include provisions that will control rising health-care costs. "We need to be enormously careful about how we do it," he said.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who represents a suburban Denver district, found himself caught between two neighbors with differing views while pumping gas one morning a few weeks ago. One neighbor said he worried that Obama is trying to do too much too soon and warned against doing anything that isn't financially sound. The other, who told Perlmutter he would like to start a new business but can't move from his current job because his wife has a disease and they might not be able to afford insurance, urged rapid action.

Perlmutter said August has given him a chance to reflect on the legitimate criticisms of the pending bills. But with a daughter who has epilepsy and faces either getting no insurance or paying prohibitively high rates, he said the August break has generated a passion to act. "There is an urgency here that is a real urgency," he said, "but there is a legitimate point: If we do all this, where are the savings? How do we finance it?"

The Windsor meeting showed that Obama can do little at this point to mollify his harshest critics. To win this battle, he now must satisfy proponents, many of them liberal Democratic activists who are increasingly energized and hungry for him to make good on his promise of real change. But he also must reassure those in the middle, who see flaws in the current system but who worry about the cost and scale of government involvement in the changes that might be coming.

That is how August changed the health-care debate.