Keep the pressure on.  I have lived in Rochester, Minnesota for the past two months since taking a position as a surgical fellow at the Mayo Clinic.  This is the epicenter of first world medicine… the type that offers hope to the hopeless.  It’s a place where patients come for help… not to present an insurance card, sit in a waiting room, have some meaningless tests and make a follow up appointment to repeat the fruitless process.  Solving problems is the focus here, not paper pushing and navel gazing.

So imagine my surprise when I phoned my new congressman’s office several weeks ago to find that no town hall had been scheduled here, at the medical mecca, to discuss what will be a sweeping overhaul of health care as we know it.

What I got was the quintessential Washington runaround.  I badgered the office for several days.  I was told he may or may not have one.  If he did decide to hold the meeting, they said, I should look for the announcement in the local newspaper!  I mentioned that it is unacceptable in the internet era to send constituents to the local newspaper to dig for information that could be readily disseminated via the congressman’s website.  I also let them know that I would be calling the office on a daily basis to learn of the particulars of the event once known.

My efforts (and those of other like-minded individuals, no doubt) were not in vain.  Last Wednesday he announced the town hall on the website.

Congressman Tim Walz (D), of Minnesota’s first district, will be holding the town hall meeting tonight, August 20 from 6 – 8 pm at Mankato East High School, Mankato, MN.  The address is 2600 Hoffman Road, Mankato.

Anyone within driving distance should make a point of being there.  The democrats still have the numbers.  I am more scared now than ever that some monstrous “compromise” bill will pass, complete with buried provisions, mandates, taxes, disguised public option mechanisms, etc.

This is the fight of our lives.  We must cede no ground.

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