Every Wednesday the senate’s in session, Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) hosts a “constituent coffee,” where voters have the chance to talk one-on-one with the senator. Ahead of next week’s rumored Senate health care vote, Ohio constituents turned the standard meet-and-greet into an impromptu town hall in Washington D.C., and demanded that the senator be candid about one issue: health care.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is expected to release a draft of the Senate’s health care bill Thursday. Portman’s communications director Kevin Smith told ThinkProgress the Ohio senator will remain undecided until he sees the bill and its Congressional Budget Office score.
In a last-ditch effort, Ohio voters used Wednesday’s “constituent coffee” to voice distaste for the House-passed health bill, the American Health Care Act, and convince the senator to make closed-door health negotiations public. (ThinkProgress live-streamed the bulk of the impromptu town hall; see full video HERE.)
The many groups that met with Portman on Wednesday included the local activist group Ohio Organizing Collective (OOC). Members of OOC bused from Columbus, Ohio to Washington D.C. to “take the town hall to Sen. Portman.” Meryl Neiman, with the Ohio Indivisible Group, came to D.C. to convince Portman to hold a town hall in his home-state on health care before voting next week. She said she’s been calling his local offices demanding he hold a town hall but has heard nothing back. ThinkProgress asked the Cincinnati, Ohio office when the last in-person town hall was, and they said there hasn’t been one in 47 days. “We’ve met regularly with these folks [ Indivisible activists and others], more than 75 times in Columbus alone, and we’re happy to engage with them like we do all Ohioans,” said Smith later in a statement to ThinkProgress.
Columbus resident Thomas Cartwright has been to Portman’s “constituent coffee” four times already, demanding Portman meet with voters in Ohio to have an open dialogue about health care. “The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not perfect,” Cartwright said, “there needs to be more competition among insurance companies.” (In 2017, there was only one Obamacare insurance carrier in 20 Ohio counties, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data.)
At the crux of Cartwright’s frustrations with Portman is the way the senate has been negotiating health care reform — in secret. Cartwright shared this frustration with Sen. Portman during the impromptu town hall:
Portman told his constituents that he’s also unsatisfied with with the House-passed bill and the way health care discussions have been conducted. He said he doesn’t currently support the steep Medicaid cuts in the House bill. And to a 16-year-old constituent, who’s concerned about his friend with a preexisting condition, Portman said the bill didn’t go far enough to protect patients like this. See full exchange below:
Not every Ohio resident there was looking to talk health care. Jacob, a student of the University of Toledo, came to Portman’s defense several times during the Q&A session, when activists interrupted the senator before he had completed his answer. Maybe it’s better that health care negotiations were not open because if they were, they’d likely be like this, said Jacob: “closed ear.”
Health activists started at the “constituent coffee” meetup and later staged a sit-in outside Sen. Portman’s D.C. office. These Ohio activists are among the many who are in D.C. Wednesday to protest the Republican health bill.
The House-passed health care bill is widely unpopular; not one state supports it, according to the New York Times. If the senate bill ends up resembling the House’s health bill that was passed in March, then Portman and other Republican colleagues will likely see more impromptu town halls.