Let’s Have a Real Senate Debate on Health Care
 |
||||
|
||||
Next week, the U.S. Senate is expected to begin debate on long-promised health care reform legislation. We’ve waited decades and fought hard for this moment—but progress could be blocked if a minority of senators refuses to allow a fair debate and a fair vote.
That’s right: Despite huge wins for pro-working family, pro-health care reform candidates in the House and Senate and the election of a pro-health care reform president, a few senators can do the bidding of insurance companies and prevent a bill from getting to the floor or getting a vote.
Now is the time to contact your senators and tell them: Health care can’t wait. It’s time for action.
Here’s more news from the fight for real health care reform:
- The Alliance for Retired Americans offered thanks to members of the U.S. House who voted to pass a health care reform bill that will improve Medicare and help the young and seniors alike. Alliance members also are protesting insurance companies like Humana that have used scare tactics and falsehoods to try and stop reform.
Reid: Public Option Will Be in Health Care Bill
 |
|
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced in a Capitol Hill press conference today that he will send a health care reform bill to the Senate floor that includes a public option. States will have until 2014 to decide if they want to participate in the public plan.
Reid said he was optimistic that health care reform will pass:
“I feel good about progress we have made within our caucus and with the White House, and we are all optimistic about reform because of the unprecedented momentum that exists.
“I believe that a public option can achieve the goal of bringing meaningful reform to our broken system. It will protect consumers, keep insurers honest and ensure competition. And that’s why we intend to include it on the bill that will be submitted to the Senate for consideration.”
Rallies Set Across Nation to Protest Big Insurance
 |
|
Health care activists around the nation tomorrow will tell the huge private health insurance companies that are spending millions of dollars to derail health care reform:
“Big Insurance: We’re sick of it!”
In Philadelphia, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker will lead a rally and march from the steps of City Hall to CIGNA’s world headquarters to call on their executives to stop standing in the way of quality affordable health care for all.
Says Holt Baker:
Here’s the way we in labor see things—America is in a big fight over health care. The American people are on one side. Big Insurance is on the other side. Only one of us will win. We know if the insurance companies win, we all lose.
Other demonstrations are planned at the headquarters and local offices of Aetna, UnitedHealthcare and Wellpoint—including its subsidiary Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Check out our friends at Health Care for America Now (HCAN) to find an event near you. HCAN, the AFL-CIO, the Health Care for America Education Fund (HCAEF) and MoveOn are among the National Day of Action sponsors of events with the theme “Big Insurance: Sick of it!”
18,000 Union Members Took Part in More Than 400 Health Care Events in August
When Marianne Hoynes rolled her wheelchair into a town hall meeting in Red Bank, N.J., last week hosted by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to share her thoughts on health care reform, she says, “I didn’t expect to be heckled and booed.”
Hoynes sent us her story yesterday, along with a link to a You Tube video showing that some in the audience sneered and jeered as she explained her situation of trying to live with two incurable autoimmune diseases. At the meeting, she says:
America’s a completely different place to live in when you get sick. I live in fear everyday that I will lose my home….I’m afraid because the co-pay for one of my medications is $389 every two weeks. I’m afraid I might not be able to afford my property taxes and I will lose my home. Please hear this voice of the disabled and don’t let the insurance lobby win this fight. Please protect me from the extortion of the pharmaceutical industry. We all need reasonable health coverage to be a basic human right, not a privilege.
The loud and disruptive tactics and outrageous lies that marked so many of the early congressional health care forums can still be found. But a counteroffensive by the union movement, including AFSCME’s recently completed Highway to Health Care Reform, and our allies, notably Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Organizing for America (OFA), show there is strong and broad support for fixing the nation’s broken health care system.
Unions and Our Allies Keep Health Care Debate Civil
 |
|
At town hall meetings, rallies and candlelight vigils, union members, health care activists and community allies are showing that the health care reform debate doesn’t belong to the loudest or most outrageous.
As a report form the Minnesota AFL-CIO says:
“The throng of union members who attended the recent town hall meeting that Rep. Tim Walz (D) held in Mankato know that their presence was crucial to keeping the debate thoughtful and respectful as right-wing fringe opponents of health care shouted and yelled in a weak attempt to disrupt the evening’s discussion.”
The 100 Minnesota union members were among the 800 or so residents who attended the Thursday town hall that filled a high school auditorium. According to news reports, the crowd was about evenly divided, but one group of opponents loudly booed and interrupted throughout the meeting. But, according to one participant, many left before the meeting was over.
Once they were gone, the air was lighter and people were able to calmly disagree with each other.
Join Web Briefing on Health Care Town Halls
|
|
Tonight, you can get facts about health care reform, find out what you can do and get the inside story from a U.S. House member who has confronted the disruptive crowds at town halls around the country.
Join a special Web briefing at 9 p.m. EDT with Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Richard Kirsch, national campaign director for Health Care for America Now! (HCAN!), Edie Falco, actor and health care reform advocate, and Dan Heck, a Working America and HCAN! canvasser who talks daily to working families about health care reform.
The call is designed to give you tips on how to get the facts out about health care reform, spread the word and help activists prevent town hall hijackings. Earlier this month, extremist zealots disrupted one of Doggett’s town halls, but he has since held several orderly and peaceful meetings and will share his experiences and lessons.
Union Health Care Activists Counter Screams with Civility
 |
||||
|
||||
In the past several days, loud, shouting and rowdy mobs have been disrupting congressional town hall meetings across the country. They’re organized by far-right and corporate backed anti-health care reform and anti-government groups. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says there’s one main reason for the mob action.
“Major health care reform is closer than ever to passage and it is no secret that special interests want to weaken or block it.”
Trumka notes that the America’s politics are “passionate, heartfelt and often loud.”
But that is not what the corporate-funded mobs are engaging in when they show up to disrupt town halls held by members of Congress….Mob rule is not democracy. People have a democratic right to express themselves and our elected leaders have a right to hear from their constituents—not organized thugs whose sole purpose is to shut down the conversation and attempt to scare our leaders into inaction.
Attacks on Medicare: Desperate Attempt to Gut Health Care Reform
This might come as a shock to the 44 million Americans who receive their health care coverage through Medicare, but according to two Republican House members, Medicare has “never done anything to make people more healthy,” and it has had the biggest “negative effect” on health care than anything else in the past 44 years.
Step back from Medicare’s 44th birthday cake (click here for more on the program’s four-decades-plus success) and let that gibberish from two of the charter members of the “let’s-kill-health care reform” caucus sink in. (While we’re doing that, a tip of the hat to Jason Rosenbaum at Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) for exposing this nonsense).
You can draw two conclusions. First, Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Tom Price (R-Ga.) are just plain out of touch with reality.
Remember: Today Is National Call-In Day for Health Care
 |
|
Remember: Today is National Call-in Day for Health Care. We all need to call our representatives in the U.S. House today and tell them to support the House health care reform bill, (H.R. 3200).
Call 1-877-264-4226 or e-mail or fax your lawmaker with the same message. Click here to find your representative and his or her contact information.
The House bill contains a public health insurance plan option and shared responsibility, including an employer “pay or play” requirement—and does not tax health care benefits working families receive through their jobs.
But get this: The AP is reporting today that the public option is in danger—making it even more necessary for us to tell Congress.
National Call-in Day is sponsored by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) and supported by AFL-CIO unions, state federations, central labor councils, community allies and health care advocates.
Get Set for National Call-In Day for Health Care, July 28
 |
|
While Congress is on recess in August, 400,000 Americans will lose their health care coverage, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP).
Members of Congress have heard plenty from the big health insurance companies and the corporate health industry and their Republican allies who have lobbied hard to water down or kill health care reform legislation that will cover the uninsured and help working families keep their health care coverage in the face of skyrocketing costs.
Now it’s time for Congress to hear the voices of America’s workers. Together with Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), AFL-CIO unions, state federations, central labor councils, community allies and health care advocates are mobilizing for a National Call-In Day for Health Care tomorrow, July 28, from 9 a.m. EDT to 5 p.m. EDT.
