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Maine Union Members Tell Snowe to Support a Public Option, and More Health Care News |
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When Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) suggested she would block health care reform if it included a public option, Maine workers took action: The Maine AFL-CIO put its convention on hold so attendees could call her and tell her that a public option is essential to make reform work. (Recent polls in Maine suggest Mainers strongly support a public option.)
Here are some of the latest developments in the fight for real health care reform:
- Momentum is building for a public option in final bills being crafted in the U.S. Senate and the House. This is a critical time to contact your senators and representatives.
- Big companies like Wal-Mart are lobbying hard to exempt the coverage they provide from health care reform. That would leave tens of millions of workers stuck in the same high-cost, no-guarantee system we have today.
- 55 members of Congress who oppose giving America the choice of a public option are actually getting government-administered health care through Medicare.
- Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, writes in today’s San Antonio Express-News that the insurance companies are trying to stay in charge of our health care, but working families can’t afford the status quo.
- Mark Froemke, president of Minnesota’s Northern Valley Labor Council, has a great op-ed today in the Grand Forks Herald that lays out the stakes on health care:
If Congress fails to enact reform, things won’t just stay the same—they’ll get worse…unless we enact changes now, those who manage to keep their coverage will pay an even heftier price over the next 10 years.
As it stands, insurance companies have a stranglehold on our health care system, driving up costs and coming between middle-class Americans and the care they need.
- Minnesota union members rallied for heath care this week in Duluth, St. Cloud and Rochester.
- Union members in Louisiana and Arkansas also are rallying and reaching out to their senators to demand health care reform that works.
- Yet another insurance company is playing with numbers, seeking to scare people about health care reform. This time it’s WellPoint fudging the facts and leaving out critical information. Check out this great chart from Think Progress that shows how the insurance companies are fighting reform.
- The Center for American Progress Action Fund has a great new report out today detailing insurance company’s tactics to hide vital information about denying coverage.
3 Comments
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This whole health care debate is totally out of hand. Too many wheels and too many deals,this just isn’t gonna come out any good for any of us! Time to start over and do it right. Have a rational debate, and everyone lose the scare tactics!
I hope the Maine constituents go after Olympia Snowe and all of the republicans that are opposing the public option. Without it, all of us will be getting a big increase in our premiums in 2010. The insurance companies will be without competition to keep the rates down. I would really like to know what states have cheap health care premiums and I would venture to guess that none of them do, so why are our representatives even discussing it? In Texas, we have republicans running the government, and I do not want anything to do with the opt in, opt out plan.
Here,here. If a state rights “trigger” is part of the bill the South won’t rise again for health care. They won’t be “red” state or “blue” states, only health states and unhealthy states. Disease knows no boundaries, it isn’t a states right issue. Florida=unhealthy state