Spring forecast: Incivility with a chance of rage
7th April 2010
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
At a senior center in Manchester Wednesday, one woman turned away when Hodes offered his outstretched hand for an introduction.
“I don’t want to shake your hand. You voted for health care, so just go,” snapped Carmen Guimond, as she refocused on her lunch of roast beef and mashed potatoes and waved him on.
When Hodes decided to stay at the table and launch a defense of what’s considered to be one of the more popular provisions of the law — closing the “doughnut hole,” a gap in prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients — she challenged him about whether he had read the entire bill and dismissed his explanation.
“Two hundred and forty dollars in the first year. That’s all it is,” she said, referring to the initial subsidy. “That’s not much.”
“And over time, by 2020, it closes the doughnut hole,” Hodes said.
“We’ll all be dead by then,” she deadpanned.