Health-care prospects galvanized some 600 people to mob Jackson City Hall Saturday as U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren visited the town to speak on the red-hot topic.

Only around 375 managed to squeeze into the hall, many displaying placards.

"Lungren's crowds are usually around 100," said on-duty Officer Patrick Ong of the California Highway Patrol. "I was told by a constituent that Lungren didn't anticipate this."

Among placard-holders, it seemed that a majority supported Pres. Barack Obama's current reform proposal. However, it was obvious that a majority of the crowd as a whole were Lungren faithful eager to back Lungren's opposition to the current Obama plan.

Lungren, R-Gold River, offered a pair of ideas that, he said, would effectively lower insurance costs while stopping short of government subsidy. Each proposal was cheered loudly.

"Insurers need to give an incentive for people who lead a healthy lifestyle," he said. "Either it's incentive without government intervention or you move to a government mandate."

The Democrats' bill would mandate that almost everybody have minimum health insurance - the way auto insurance is mandated already. Some subsidy would be offered for those who could not pay for insurance.

Lungren also called for immediate and widespread effort at establishing health-insurance "pools," units that could use the economy-of-scale argument in bargaining with insurers for more favorable rates for pool members.

"Chambers of commerce, Kiwanis clubs, alumni associations - pools that can negotiate to bring costs down," he said.

Lungren said he agreed with Obama that a large-scale health-care reform is necessary.

Obama also calls for establishing pools, but only as a component of his bill. The pool idea has been around for a while without gaining traction.

Lungren took pains to distance himself from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose remarks about an end-of-life counseling element in the bill caused intense outcry over what was called a "poisoning" of the health-care debate. However, Lungren did go so far as to refer to end-of-life counseling as "government influence" in what he said should be a private-sector discussion.

Lungren also raised the specter of a "rationing" of health care under an Obama plan. Obama has said the insurance companies themselves are already "rationing care."

Lungren, seeing the sharp division in politics among audience members, called for decorum before opening a question-and-answer period.

"I want you to be vigorous, to be passionate, but let's show respect for one another," he cautioned.

It sort of worked, and sort of didn't.

A man noted Lungren's Catholic education and chided him for demonstrating no grasp of the doctrine of "social justice" he heard espoused in college.

Angry audience voices called out, "Ask a question."

A woman, also making a speech before asking a question, related a tale of surviving ovarian cancer and running a successful business only to close it and take a low-paying job - just for health benefits to cover no more than regular checkups, which she estimated had cost her some $20,000 in six years.

A man's voice shouted, "Let's skip the Obama plants."

In each of those two cases, Lungren dutifully and skillfully translated the gist of the "questioners'" remarks into what could be construed as something he needed to respond to. However, he responded with popular talking points he'd already made - concerning pools and incentives for a healthy lifestyle.

Lungren made a point to complain both at the beginning of his talk and at the end that Republicans had offered a total of 31 amendments to the Obama bill "and not one was adopted."