No town halls on health care are scheduled during the August congressional break for constitutents of Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco.

Why not? He doesn’t need them.

“The health-care bill is still viscerally hated mostly by people on the right,” said spokesman Charlie Keller. “If we were to go to downtown Yakima and have one, there’d be 500 people there all saying, ‘Yay Doc!’”

Protesters across the country have been confronting members of Congress at town halls held to gauge the voters’ mood for Democratic-style reform.

Keller said Hastings will be out and about throughout the district next week, although a precise schedule wasn’t available.

He also said Hastings had a conference call with 17 hospitals in the district this past week to gather information about what possible cuts in Medicare would do to their operations. In a word, they would be devastating, Keller said. 

— Leah Beth Ward