More than 700 people showed up Friday night for a town hall meeting on health care that lasted four hours. More than 60 of them offered their thoughts to and asked questions of U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd.

Anyone hoping to move Souder to support the changes in health care that President Obama advocates saw no sign of success. But the event did show how sharply the House bill on health care divides his constituents. The town hall provided supporters and opponents alike the chance to question Souder closely. And it allowed Souder to explain his perspective on the bill and on problems and potential solutions in health care.

Judging from shows of applause for points that speakers made, the crowd was strongly opposed to the House-passed legislation and the general principles that Obama has outlined. Opponents appeared to outnumber supporters 5-1 or more.

“Government involvement is a huge part of the problem in health care,” Dr. John Crawford, an oncologist and former Fort Wayne city councilman, said. Crawford, strongly opposed to proposed changes in health care, said that costs rose faster as more and more forms of insurance, especially government coverage, accelerated “the separation of the purchaser from the payer.”

Crawford said creating a massive new program in the midst of such a serious recession is an especially bad approach. Funding problems with Social Security and Medicare are going to be serious budget impediments soon, he warned.

“Medicare will be bankrupt and insolvent by 2017 unless government raises taxes or cuts benefits,” he said. Small steps are the best approach now.

“At this point, Congress should do only incremental reforms at low cost,” he said.

Incremental tweakings in the system might not provide the change that Kelly Soracco of Fort Wayne said she needs now. Soracco, whose twin 3-year-olds, Lincoln and Reid, have autism, told Souder that her family has almost expended its savings to pay for therapy for the children. Without a public option choice in a reformed health-insurance system, she thinks she'll have to quit her job to reduce the family's income so the twins can qualify for publicly funded care.

“The public option would give my family a choice. We've run out of choices,” she said.

Souder said that the public option would be so heavily subsidized by the government that private insurance plans could not compete. Before long, it would be something close to a single-payer system, he argued.

Souder and many others opposed to Obama's approach on health care reform argue for several elements of less-radical change in how Americans obtain health care.

First, he supports tort reform. Such strict limitations on malpractice awards have been in place in Indiana for more than 30 years.

“There is not true health care reform on the table until we have tort reform on the table,” Souder said.

Souder also favors expanded use of health savings accounts, which allow account holders to bank what they don't spend on health care in a given year.

He also supports loosening restrictions on health insurance so that insurers could hedge their risks through reinsurance. That, he argues, could help provide private-sector insurance for pre-existing conditions and catastrophic illnesses.

Fort Wayne attorney David Van Gilder asked Souder a pair of fundamental questions: Is health care a fundamental right or a privilege? Will saving the public costs of health care reform the president advocates outweigh the increased costs for Medicare, Medicaid and other government health care if nothing is done to stop cost increases?

“I believe access to health care is a basic right,” Souder told him. “Do you have a right to have other people pay for it?” Souder argued that in the spirit of charity, Americans should fund medical care for people who cannot afford it. But that doesn't mean such charity should become a government institution.

He confirmed that he thinks not extending government-funded or -controlled health care to everyone will save more money. More important, it will save the character of the health care system.

“When you cut back and take out the profit in the system, you'll have a decline in quality,” Souder said.

Those at the town hall raised many subjects, from a purported federal power grab against radio stations to claims of secret disease organisms in prescriptions to religious-solidarity shout-outs for Souder.

A pervasive theme in the meeting was suspicion of Obama and his Cabinet. In part, the listening session became a venting session for people frustrated by the massive spending by the Obama administration. At the most offbeat end of the spectrum, some wondered whether the Illuminati (secretive groups seen as controllers of world affairs) play an integral role in health care reform, compared Obama to Vladimir Lenin and suggested that the president is scheming to raise a private army of 21st-century brownshirts.

Late in the evening, one woman asked Souder, “Is our president counseled by Marxists and communists?”

“I do not believe he is, honestly,” Souder told her. “You don't have to be a committed Marxist or socialist” to believe that expanding government is the best answer to health care problems.

“It's a different world view,” he said. “Down deep, he's just a kind, misguided liberal.”