A Tampa "Town Hall" Forum Goes Awry: Anatomy of a Public Meeting Fiasco

This case describes a health care town hall meeting that was derailed by vocal protesters. The case was designed for a very specific teaching purpose: to discuss a variety of alternatives to the tried and true town hall meeting format which, the sponsoring professor believes, is not only quite vulnerable to disruption, but is not a terribly effective or democratic way to involve the public in local decision making, to begin with. Underlying the case is a belief that those who organize public engagements should be deliberate about: 1) the purposes of a public meeting: what a public meeting aims to do 2) the strategy of recruiting participants: who participates 3) the organization of discussion and decision making 4) the extent to which conclusions of the meeting will influence policy or public action The case itself provides a lively starting point for the conversation by describing how a modest Tampa meeting about local health care was overtaken by opponents of national health care reform. The case also provides as context background about the decision by Democrats in 2009 to sponsor health care town hall meetings across the country, in an effort to boost public support for health reform-an effort that was subverted when the meetings became the target of large, vocal, anti-health reform protests. HKS Case Number 1939.0

• Federal government
• Public opinion
• Government policy and regulation
• Healthcare benefits
• Decision making
• Healthcare and treatment
• Politics