Three US House representatives came together for a town hall meeting entitled “Protecting the Affordable Care Act,” on the first day of a recess.
At a time when Republicans are ducking their own town hall meetings and are being booed by their voter base for supporting President Trump’s agenda, three democrats, representing an area that spans from Napa to Walnut Creek and Crockett to Stockton, came face to face with hundreds of more people than an average town hall meeting. People who wanted to hear from their representatives on the state of the Affordable Care Act were in attendance.

Inside the Contra Costa County administration building, Congressman Mark Desaulnier (11th district), Congressman Mike Thompson (5th district) and Congressman Jerry McNerney (9th district) were joined by California State Senator Bill Dodd (3rd district), Contra Costa Health Services director Bill Walker and three other panelists spoke regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, to a crowd of an estimated 500 constituents.

Rep. Thompson opened the meeting saying, “We are here today because the president wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” which got a response of boos from the packed chamber.

To soothe the people he noted there were three committees in the house working on the ACA, and the three congressmen at the town hall were in all of them.
McNerney took a stance and said, “We are going to have to adopt single payer.” A message which seemed to resonate with the chamber.
Rep. DeSaulnier said that the fight for Obamacare will require the urgency of protecting the constitution.

Reiterating McNerney, he spoke of a universal single payer system and added that Dodd had introduced a bill to the state legislature that would bring a single payer system to California.
The remaining of the meeting were questions from the audience and remarks from the Congressmen and the other panelists about the dangers of repealing the ACA without replacement, which would raise costs for those who can least afford it.

Around 40 minutes in, Rep. Mcnerney said “Excuse me I have to leave to fight the appointment of Scott Pruitt.” And then he left. In his closing remarks Rep. DeSaulnier recounted the advice Fredrick Douglas gave a young man on the day he died, “agitate, agitate, agitate.”

Meanwhile, in a study that included surveys of 1,200 congressional staffers, “90 percent said that in-person constituent visits could influence a lawmaker.”