2 days Ago
APTOS — More than 270 constituents of Rep. Jimmy Panetta poured into Samper Hall performance center on Cabrillo College’s Aptos campus Friday morning to hear from the federal lawmaker while Congress was out for an early-spring recess.While the theme of the town hall was health care, the atmosphere was palpably political with an overwhelming mood of fear, anger and urgency in response to actions taken by President Donald Trump in the infancy of his second term.
One attendee carried a sign into the brightly lit arts complex that read, “We are not OK,” with red, white and blue colors streaked across the cardboard canvas. Others raised signs from the audience made from paper plates that read “not enough” and “less talk” while Panetta spoke.The Samper Recital Hall at Cabrillo College was filled to capacity for Rep.
Jimmy Panetta’s Medicaid town hall on Friday. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)Audience members let their feelings be known in verbal and nonverbal ways on Friday. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)Many hands went up when it was time for questions from the audience on Friday.
(Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)Rep. Jimmy Panetta, second from right, checks in on Friday with panelist Dr. Ananta Addala before holding his town hall about protecting Medicaid on Friday.
Addala is a Stanford Medicine pediatric endocrinologist and physician scientist focused on inequalities in pediatric Type 1 diabetes management and outcomes. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)An audience member asks a question at Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s town hall on Friday at Cabrillo College.
(Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)Show Caption1 of 5The Samper Recital Hall at Cabrillo College was filled to capacity for Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s Medicaid town hall on Friday. (Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel)ExpandPanetta kicked off the event with a sweeping, almost 30-minute speech sharply rebuking the Trump administration and its recent actions that extend well beyond the health care sphere.
He criticized everything from the senior members of the administration who accidentally shared war plans with a journalist on the messenger app Signal, to the drastic staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration, to the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to a prison in El Salvador despite a federal judge’s order to halt the effort.Panetta assembled a three-member panel of local health care leaders to focus on Medicaid and a Republican-sponsored spending bill that officials from across Santa Cruz County have warned will devastate the program and the local social safety net. The resolution, passed with only Republican votes in late February, included $880 billion in reductions to the U.
S. House committee responsible for managing the national health care program for people of limited financial means.“What they’ve said is that Medicaid has had waste, fraud and abuse.
Once again, they’re using this as the excuse,” said Panetta, who voted against the bill. “It’s going to be very, very destructive for the families here on the Central Coast.”The California congressman also chided Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his decision to support the spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.
While he was sympathetic to the challenges of the decision, Panetta said Schumer’s messaging was “absolutely horrible on this” and left people angry.“The main thing is communication and coordination. That’s why this is so important, that’s why I’m doing these town halls,” remarked Panetta, who said he has conducted 13 town halls and 12 listening sessions since Feb.
1. “Ultimately, it leads to mobilization to hold this administration accountable. But more importantly, to mobilize constituents in other districts, .
.. to hold (accountable) those representatives that support these kinds of cuts.
”While the event did include an extended question-and-answer period where several members of the audience were able to speak, many attendees left visibly frustrated and feeling that their concerns were not heard.Anita Salem, an organizer with Indivisible Santa Cruz County, which helped lobby for the town hall, called the event “a waste of time.” Salem said not enough constituents with views contrary to Panetta’s were handed the mic and suggested some speakers were intentionally selected or identified in advance.
“He spent the majority of the time talking and being repetitive,” said Salem. “He didn’t listen to his constituents.”Those called upon for a question included a local doctor, an acupuncturist, the father of a woman with several disabilities requiring around-the-clock care, an Aptos native critical of Schumer’s decision, Cabrillo College Trustee Adam Spickler and Dientes Community Dental CEO Laura Marcus, among a few others.
“He was very specific about his legislation. He’s a legislator, so that makes sense,” said Salem. “But everybody wants more now.
We feel like we’re in a different world and we’re in a different situation, so we want him to be different. We want him to go beyond the typical politician.”Another attendee, Earlene Alexiou, left the auditorium with tears of frustration rolling down her face.
“We see it all. We know all this,” said Alexiou, referring to the myriad issues invoked during the event. “He was talking at us.
He wasn’t really letting us ask questions and that’s what I feel frustrated about.”Panetta’s office told the Sentinel questioners were chosen live, at random and that more events are being planned. Panetta was also seen after the event engaged in conversation with several members of the public from the edge of the stage before he was whisked away by his staff.
“We did our level best to get to as many questions as possible and (there are) still more questions to answer,” Panetta’s office said. “Constituents can reach out to any of our offices if they have questions. We’re always happy to answer those questions at the office and Mr.
Panetta will be doing more town halls, more open office sessions, more virtual town halls to continue to answer questions during this chaotic time.”Despite the sometimes contentious dynamics playing out in the room throughout the event, the message delivered about the consequences of the Medicaid cuts could not have been starker.According to the expert panel, one-third of Santa Cruz County residents, or nearly 90,000 people, are beneficiaries of Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid implementation program.
If the program is destabilized, the panelists cautioned, it will have cascading impacts on the local health care system, such as overwhelmed emergency departments.Anita Aguirre is CEO of Santa Cruz Community Health, a federal qualified health center that serves more than 13,000 community members each year regardless of their ability to pay. Aguirre said 70% of her organization’s patients are on Medi-Cal while 10% are entirely uninsured.
Aguirre predicted that if the Medicaid cuts are implemented, 60% of the local provider’s adult patients will lose coverage, skyrocketing the uninsured rate up to 40%.“If that happens, this policy change would significantly affect our ability to care for our patients, who are the most vulnerable in our community,” said Aguirre. “It would .
.. really cripple not just our ability, but the entire network within our community of health care.
”.
