Dear Senator: Please Support Public Option and Save My Life
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Today, state and local union activists are continuing to deliver the more than 42,000 personally written letters from union members and Working America members calling on Congress to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation.
The letters are part of a massive nationwide week of health care action. Union leaders and activists are spending two days in Washington, D.C., delivering the letters and talking with their senators and representatives about the need for strong health care reform legislation that provides guaranteed coverage for all, includes a public health insurance option and more.
Yesterday, working Americans across the country took part in the National Call-In Day for Health Care Reform, sending their senators strong messages.
Rockefeller’s Public Option Killed in Senate Finance’s Health Care Bill
UPDATE: Schumer’s public option amendment got killed as well, 10-13, with Baucus, Conrad and Lincoln voting against it. Disgrace.
Looks like one version of public option just got killed in the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s public option amendment, the strongest of the public option amendments offered, was just voted down 15-8, with five Democrats voting against it: Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Tom Carper (Del.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.).
As Rockefeller said before the vote:
Why would we not do this? People come second and the profits come first if we’re against this.
Workers Paying More for Health Coverage; Docs Back Public Option and Other Health Care News
As the battle for comprehensive health care reform picks up, here’s a roundup on the latest, including a survey that finds workers are paying more for job-based health care coverage; another survey showing physicians support a public option as part of a health care reform package; and well-reasoned arguments showing why the U.S. House health care reform package is the better bill.
The average family health insurance premium has jumped by 131 percent during the past decade while wages have increased by just 38 percent and inflation by 28 percent, finds the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KKF’s) annual health benefits survey released this week.
Today, the annual premium for employer-provided health insurance is $13,375, with the employer paying $9,860 and workers footing $3,515 of the premium costs.
As a result, many employers say they plan to cut back health care benefits even more than they already have with higher co-pays and deductibles for workers.
America’s Workers Oppose Taxing Health Care Benefits
One of the most troubling health care reform proposals—taxing health care benefits—that had gained some traction in recent weeks appears to be slipping. Grassroots health care activists, President Obama and leading congressional Democrats have helped shed the light on, and slow the momentum of, this unfair tax that could boost working families’ tax liability by as much as 28 percent, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Yesterday, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told Sen. Max Baucus (D- Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, that any health care bill that included a tax on health care benefits and failed to include a strong public health insurance plan option would lose significant Democratic support. The paper said Reid told Baucus to drop
a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.
Health Care Reform Must Focus on Patients’ Needs
As Congress begins to consider comprehensive health care reform, one health expert is telling Congress reform must be focused on making sure the most vulnerable patients are served.
Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, told a Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform roundtable this morning that if “we can make the system work for vulnerable patients with multiple chronic conditions, we can make it work for everyone.” Ness told the panel:
We will not achieve meaningful reform unless we improve our health care delivery system so that more people have access to better, more affordable care and get better value for their health care dollars.
Senate Passes Bill Extending Health Coverage to Low-Income Children
Some 4 million more low-income kids are getting closer to receiving health care coverage, after the Senate last night approved (66-32) a four-and-a-half year extension of a state-based program that provides health insurance for low-income children. Some 7 million children are currently enrolled.
It’s not been an easy path for the children’s health care program. Bush twice vetoed similar bills in 2007. But President Barack Obama will sign the legislation. Says Sen. Max Baucus:
When President Obama signs this bill, the real victory will belong not to politicians, but to kids…[it] gets kids in low-income working families the doctor’s visits and medicines they need when they’re sick, and the checkups they need to stay well.
