U.S. healthcare town halls: Anger, fear and lunacy

By John Whitesides - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sound and fury at U.S. "town hall" meetings on healthcare reform have revealed as much about conservative fears of President Barack Obama as about health issues -- and in the end might have little significance in the broader debate.

The angry crowds that disrupted recent public information sessions on the healthcare overhaul have voiced a range of concerns, from an expanding federal deficit to emotional warnings about Obama's "socialist" policies.

The shouting captured media attention and overshadowed debate on the complex details of Obama's top domestic priority, but the furor could limit the influence of the town hall meetings when lawmakers take up the issue again in September.

"A lot of this is the base of the two parties screaming at each other and I don't know if it's changing a lot of minds one way or the other," Republican consultant Dan Schnur said.

"It just turns people off," said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at the moderate think tank Third Way. He said extreme elements on each side are battling and "for everyone else this is a revolting spectacle."

At times, the meetings have been a pretext for an emotional and often extreme debate about a changing America and Obama, a Democrat who in his seven months in office has won a costly auto industry bailout and a rescue package for the economy.

"This is about the systematic dismantling of this country," a woman told Democratic Senator Arlen Specter on Tuesday at one of two raucous meetings in Pennsylvania, where shouting crowds said the United States was heading the way of Russia and "Maoist China."

A man told Specter to "tell Obama to represent us as an American." When Specter said the president was, the crowd roared in disagreement.

"I think there is a mood in America of anger," Specter, a longtime Republican who switched to the Democrats earlier this year, told CBS's "Early Show" on Wednesday.

"With so many people unemployed and so much bickering in Washington, people are disgusted with the partisanship and with the fear of losing their healthcare. It all boils over," Specter said.

'PULL THE PLUG ON GRANDMA'

The heckling crowds -- encouraged by Republican and conservative groups and talk show hosts to help create a sense of widespread outrage about healthcare reform -- have frequently spotlighted inaccurate charges such as the creation of "death panels" to decide the level of care for the elderly.

That forced the president to publicly declare at his own town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday he does not want to "pull the plug on grandma." He condemned the "scare tactics" of healthcare reform opponents.

Obama, the first black U.S. president, has seen those tactics before. During the presidential campaign, he battled Internet rumors that he was a secret Muslim and that he refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

A group known as "birthers" has challenged the legitimacy of Obama's place in the White House, refusing to accept he was born in the United States -- a requirement for the presidency -- despite documented evidence of his birth in Hawaii.