NORTHAMPTON — Health care, Donald Trump and war were some of the topics of conversation when U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Worcester, visited 19 residents of Rockridge Retirement Community for an intimate conversation.
Several health care-related topics dominated Friday’s conversation: rising prescription drug prices and efforts to keep them under control; additional assistance to help families pay for caregivers when a loved one gets dementia; and, of course, the Republican health care bills, one that has passed through the House and another awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Earlier, McGovern had visited Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst. He spent the day before meeting with seniors at several public and private housing facilities in central Massachusetts as health care continues to dominate headlines amid Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
Those Republican efforts to uproot President Barack Obama’s signature policy achievement were of particular concern, given the deep cuts the proposed laws would make to Medicaid, which pays for long-term care for two-thirds of nursing home residents in the country.
“By any measure, it’s an awful bill,” McGovern said of the American Health Care Act that House Republicans passed in early May.
It wasn’t just for themselves as senior citizens, however, that attendees were worried about the repeal-and-replace plans.
“My children, as well as a lot of other young families, are having a hard time trying to get insurance,” Patricia Williams, 69, told McGovern. “It’s so expensive to have insurance for a family today, they have to make choices.”
McGovern said he recognizes that the Affordable Care Act does need to be improved, and he offered several ways to do so. “I think everyone will agree that health care is too expensive.”
To combat those costs and to insure more people, McGovern came out in favor of a single payer or “Medicare-for-all” universal health care system.
“If we don’t do it that way, let’s provide a government public option for people that’s affordable, that provides people all the basic care they need for them and their families,” he said. “Let them buy into it and let the insurance companies compete with that.”
To lower prescription drug prices, McGovern said he favored legislation that would let Medicare negotiate directly with drug manufacturers like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs currently does — a policy President Donald Trump, and former Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have all previously advocated.
The big obstacle standing in the way of Democrats passing any legislation, of course, is that the party is currently frozen out of power as Republicans hold control over the legislative and executive branches. As McGovern more euphemistically put it when asked about increasing aid to families who need to hire caregivers, “The question is whether or not in this current Congress there’s going to be resources to be able to do that.”
Removing Republicans, and particularly Trump, from office was at the front of several people’s minds. Hazel Porter asked if there was anything being done to oust Trump, and Phyllis Flandreau asked McGovern’s opinion on potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2020. Among those McGovern mentioned were California Sen. Kamala Harris, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“We need to do a better job of telling people what we’re for,” he said about Democrats’ efforts to win back power in 2018 and 2020, instead of just articulating what the party is against.
Roy Mitchel, 97, asked about a proposed Trump administration budget that would eliminate low-income heating subsidies.
“We have a strong bipartisan group lobbying to keep that money there,” McGovern responded.
The conversation also turned to topics like how McGovern’s job affects his personal life, but it always came back to health care. Toward the end of the gathering, McGovern was asked how he expected to pay for the broad social-welfare programs he supports. His answer: Stop spending so much on war.
“Why are we spending trillions and trillions of dollars to build more nuclear weapons?” he asked. “I’m sick of these wars, I don’t feel any more secure that we’ve been in Afghanistan — now the longest war in history — since 2001.”
What the United States spends on its military is certainly a large pool of money to draw from. A recent Brown University study found that from 2001 to 2016, the cost of Homeland Security and U.S. wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan was $3.6 trillion. Combined with the “dedicated war spending” the defense, state and homeland security departments requested for 2017, the study put the total budgetary cost of those wars at $4.79 trillion.
“When is enough?” McGovern asked. “Let’s take those trillions and put it here.”
Part of the effort to cut back on defense spending is to redefine what the term “national security” means, McGovern said.
“It ought to mean more than the number of bombs we have,” he said. “This debate is about priorities.”