A Better Kind of Town Hall

If you were trying to figure out what the country should do about health care, would going to one of the "town halls" across the country help you make up your mind?

That's something of a rhetorical question, because you might not be able to get in. So far the town halls have been crowded with people who already know what they think about the proposed health care reform plan, and want to have their say. The conservative opponents of the plan have been first and most aggressive on this, but supporters have shown up, too, with some halls turning into events that one journalist described as ""professional wrestling for the civically engaged."

But surveys show nearly three in 10 Americans still haven't made up their mind about the plan, and much of what's going on is aimed at them. New surveys from Gallup and Pew show the public is paying attention to the town halls, but their views are still mixed. Somewhat more say the town hall protests are making them more sympathetic to the plan's opponents (34 percent) than to the supporters (21 percent) but nearly half say the debate's made no difference at all.

Taking a stand is vital in politics, and so is asking political leaders to defend their positions. That's an essential part of reaching public decisions. But the debate so far is confusing, fearful and polarizing on a problem that somehow, sometime, has to be addressed.

It doesn't have to be this way. There are different ways to talk about issues that matter -- if we decide that's what we want.

Everything Public Agenda has learned about how people reach conclusions on issues shows that weighing choices side-by-side is enormously useful. Comparing options - which involves facing the costs and other tradeoffs of anything done in the public realm - is an essential part of the public's "learning curve" on tough problems. To work through them, people need to stack up choices against each other and consider the pros and cons.

And weighing pros and cons means actually listening to what other people have to say – not to figure out how to counter them (or worse yet, shout them down). It means considering that the other person might actually have a valid point, or at least a valid reason to be worried.

What would be needed to launch a different kind of conversation?

For a start, a different model of the town hall. If leaders and advocates view town halls as battlefields, and citizens as an audience to be persuaded, educated or managed, you get the kind of discussion we've been having. But public forums can be very different. Public Agenda's work in public engagement lays out the strategies and techniques that spark more productive discussion.

And secondly, nonpartisan choices for citizens to chew over. Our Citizens Survival Kit on health care lays out precisely the kind of citizen choices on health care that many Americans could use as a starting point. The kit isn't a guide to the 1,000-page bill on the table in Washington, nor is it a blueprint for writing a different plan. (For the bill's specifics, try the resources here, here and here).

But it is the kind of backgrounder that nearly all of us need to grasp the challenge the country faces in health care. It's the "Health Care 101" that can help you think about what policies are most likely to work. In fact, we can practically guarantee that the pros and cons of the bill itself will make more sense if you've considered what you want on health care – and what you're willing to do to get it.