Mark Schmitt on the engagement of citizens in public debates: The images of 83-year-old Rep. John Dingell, in his sixth decade in Congress, jeered and shouted down at a town meeting on health care last week brought to mind a long-forgotten episode that, when I went to work on Capitol Hill in the summer of 1990, seemed to loom over everything. It was often referred to by a single word: "Catastrophic." Two years earlier, in 1988, Congress had passed, by overwhelming bipartisan majorities, what was then the largest expansion of Medicare to cover catastrophic illness, long hospital stays, and some pharmaceutical costs. In 1989, by equally large majorities, Congress repealed the law. The bill had put most of the cost on a small group of wealthy seniors, and after passage, a a direct-mail organization stoked backlash over the funding structure, convincing many seniors they would pay the same $800 surtax as the wealthiest. It is remembered today mostly for the televised scene of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, then chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and, like Dingell, a baron whose authority had gone unquestioned, besieged by angry seniors blocking his car as he tried to exit a similar town meeting. KEEP READING ...
