Hundreds of Vermonters – overwhelmingly in favor of health care reform –  packed spirited but civil town meetings hosted on Saturday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at a public park in Arlington and a church in Rutland. “We proved this afternoon something that makes us all very proud. We live in a state where people can have different points of view and yet we can listen to each other and treat each other with respect,” the senator said as he wrapped up the second of two two-hour town meetings. Both sessions were a stark contrast to raucous town-hall-style meetings in other states that have been disrupted by angry, shouting hecklers.

Sanders’ first meeting drew about 600 people to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rutland, filling the pews inside and spilling over to folding chairs on the lawn outdoors. Another overflow crowd of about 500 jammed into a park pavilion in this town where Norman Rockwell lived and painted his iconic image of a traditional New England town meeting.

At both meetings, Sanders asked the audience for a show of hands if they favored the government making sure that every American has health insurance. Supporters of a public health care program like Medicare for all Americans clearly outnumbered opponents, but separate lines of Vermonters on both sides of the issue took turns asking the senator dozens of questions.

The senator will continue his focus on health care reform on Monday, when Mary Wakefield, administrator of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, visits Vermont. Sanders, a member of the Senate health committee, and Wakefield will visit The Health Center in Plainfield, the Hardwick Dental Clinic, and the Hardwick Area Health Center.

Reporting from Plainfield, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote Saturday about what he called “a good news story about health care.”  In rural areas of Vermont served by the community health centers, he concluded, “the problem of access to primary care does, in fact, seem to have been solved.”

To read the column, click here.

To watch the latest “Senator Sanders Unfiltered” on health care, click here.