Obama faces a town hall … and the Truth-O-Meter

President Barack Obama held another town hall to discuss health care, this time visiting Portsmouth, N.H.

The forum was considerably less raucous than those some members of Congress have faced in recent days. Nobody tried to shout him down or disrupt the meeting, and it appeared there were many Obama supporters in the audience.

We found two items to check right away, and we’re still reviewing the transcript for additional claims we may examine later this week.

• Obama repeated one statement he’s repeated many times before: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” We found that the bills in Congress plan do build on the system we have now, where most people get health insurance through their employers. But some of the details indicate that reform may shake up the system for some people. After looking into the health insurance exchange and the public option, we rated this statement

Half True

.

• An audience member asked Obama why he wouldn’t “chastise Congress for having two systems of health care, one for all of us and one for them.” Actually, Obama said, members of Congress choose from the same health care plans as any other federal employee, and that “their deal is no better than the janitor that cleans their offices.” We looked into that statement and found it

True

.