What happens when instead of one elected official, you bring in seven, and then, for good measure, throw in a 50,000-watt radio mike inviting the entire Delaware Valley to participate?

You get a town-hall meeting on steroids.

That was just one of the descriptions my listeners gave to the health-care town-hall event the Daily News and I presented last Monday night. Seven of our local representatives came to state their views and, equally important, to listen to constituents.

The event clearly told me several things about the issue of health-care reform. First, these elected officials, no matter which side of the issue they're on, recognize they are the servants of the people. And the only way to truly represent the interests of the people is to meet with them, even when the issue is difficult and highly charged, and the crowds are emotional.

Democratic Reps. Bob Brady and Chaka Fattah, both from "safe" districts in the city, knew that many of my listeners opposed their overall positions. They could've conveniently ducked out - instead, they were among the first to commit.

Three of the others, Reps. Jim Gerlach (R) and Joe Sestak (D), and ex-Rep. Toomey (R), are running statewide in Pennsylvania, and this represented a significant commitment of their time. Yet they were there, too.

This raises the question of the other local members of Congress who didn't respond to our invitation and still have not held a single town hall on health care.

Where were Democratic Reps. Allyson Schwartz and Patrick Murphy? Why do they refuse to meet with their people on this vital issue? If you won't hold a town hall, are you really doing your job as a representative?

I'd like to call on all voters in our area to toss out any representative of either party who won't meet with them on this significant topic. That makes them not representatives but "mis-representatives." (And those who'll hold only call-in town halls are nothing but "telephonies.") Maybe we should demand that politicians sign a pledge to hold town halls at least five times a year.

Another significant thing we discovered is that the bill, HR 3200, is so complicated and requires so many yet-to-be-worked-out compromises that there's no reasonable way Congress can or should vote on it before mid-November at the earliest.

From the discussion, I also came away believing that our members of Congress may not fully know what the bill means in key areas. I could hire a whole team of fact checkers to follow them around on many of their claims.

For instance, four of the seven wanted tort reform to bring down costs. Sestak dismissed this by saying that the cost to doctors of practicing "defensive medicine" was less than 0.5 percent of total health costs.

This statistic may be somewhat true when applied to just malpractice insurance, but it does not address the overwhelming feeling of doctors that they are practicing defensive medicine and ordering expensive tests that are unnecessary.

I also came away from this session with the feeling that all reasonable people do not believe this bill mandates "death panels" in the sections involving doctors' being paid to give end-of-life counseling for those over 65.

But the audience and guests raised several valid concerns: The congressman who wrote the section in the bill that addresses the living will is a proponent of euthanasia. Zeke Emanuel, Rahm's brother and a top adviser on the bill, is a proponent of assessing the value of a life vs. costly medical interventions. It is then understandable why this section has raised such concern.

And because the bill is vague in key areas, it's no wonder people are so concerned by drastic new regulations.

For example, it recently came to light that the bill will allow access to tax-return information beyond the IRS in order to perform tests related to those getting lower-cost drugs and other services. It's clear we need more debate and more details, otherwise the idea of bringing your CPA and your tax return to your next doctor's appointment may become a reality.

I thank the Daily News and the seven public officials for laying out the issues. I await the response of the representatives who refuse to meet the voters.

The clock is ticking.

Dom Giordano is a talk-show host for WPHT (1210/AM).