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Large crowd at Reed’s town hall

NORTH HARMONY — While the phrase “town hall meeting” brings to mind a few folks gathered in a dusty hall, today’s gathering was anything but.

A large crowd gathered outside the North Harmony Senior Citizens Center for U.S. Rep. Tom Reed’s first town hall meeting of the day as protesters and attendees waited to hear what the congressman had to say and share their own input. The crowd, numbering in the hundreds, had to be relocated outside due to the size of the gathering.

Due to the event being moved outside, it was difficult to hear. At first, no amplifier system was in place, however, one was brought out before the congressman arrived. Despite the addition of a microphone, Reed often competed with the noise of the crowd.

When Reed arrived, he thanked the crowd for attending and invited them to share their opinions with him.

“I truly do believe you have to listen to people if you’re going to represent people,” Reed said.

The crowd yelled out several topics throughout the event for Reed to cover, such as repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, defunding Planned Parenthood and President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

“I hear some sentiment that the act was broken, the act wasn’t working and you want us to fix it,” Reed said. “What we want to do is replace it with a health care system that works better for all Americans.”

He was then greeted with loud shouts of opposition.

Later on, Reed clarified that he is not advocating to go back to the way things were before the Affordable Care Act. An audience member shouted, “You’re talking repeal and replace.”

“We listen to you, and what we want to do is go forward,” Reed said, “and look for and opportunity for reforms that are going to improve health care for all. Concrete examples are refundable tax credits, health saving accounts that allow you to use your money to buy the plans that work for you, and we’ve looked at situations like medicaid expansion to make sure medicaid is there.”

See the full story in Sunday’s OBSERVER.

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