Pennsylvania Health Care for America Now Continues To Protest Cigna Cigna Victim Stacie Ritter to Seek Help from CEO H. Edward Hanway at his mansion in Media, PA Action Corresponds with New Television Ad Contrasting Insurance CEO’s Fancy Home with Average Foreclosed Home Due To Medical Bankruptcy **Watch the new ad and Stacie Ritter talking about her situation and plan for today here: HealthCareforAmericaNow.org/Mansion** Continue reading
On Tuesday September 22, HCAN, in over a hundred events around the country, thousands of people took time off to say Big Insurance: Sick of It. They say that they are angry insurance companies for denying people care and coverage, for paying their employees more to deny care, and for using our premiums to lobby Congress in opposition to health care reform and a public health insurance option. In Pennsylvania, we had well attended events in Philadelphia, Williamsport, Erie, and Pittsburgh. Created with flickr slideshow. Over 750 people from Philadelphia and its suburbs rallied, chanted and marched in support of health care reform. They came together to demand that CIGNA and other health insurance companies stop denying care and coverage to Americans and end their opposition to real reform that includes a public health insurance option. Continue reading
Teshuva—which is usually translated as repentance but literally means return or turning around—is central to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for Jews, which ended at sundown today. This essay is initally about how we turn ourselves around, specifically with how we learn to trust others when we lack some basic trust in the world around us and then it moves on to talk about the connection between trust in others and trust in a process or ideal that we might call God. Much of the beginning of the essay, however, is mostly about my cat Bobcat. How do we learn to trust? People who abuse others typically don’t trust others–they expect to be abused themselves and deep down believe that they have to do unto others before others do unto them. Morality and civic virtue are practices that survive only when we live in a community in which people have some… Continue reading
is back from location scouting for our next event. It’s going to be fun! # Senator Kyl (R-AZ): I don’t need maternity care. Senator Stabenow (D-MI): I think your mom probably did. # In mid-August I wrote that the right / GOP tactics on health care would help us. Here is the proof. http://ping.fm/q7N7n # Continue reading
You know how frustrated you are with the Republican determination to cut god things out the state budget. This weekend you can do something about it. Volunteer to help Anne Scheuring win Tuesday’s special Senate election in the 24th district by contacting her campaign at info@dsscc.org or info@annescheuring.com Continue reading
Patco open houses on Delaware waterfront transit lines. About time! http://ping.fm/taJ8k # If no one likes your bipartisan bill, you have to go back to your party. Good! http://ping.fm/EaaKc # Baucus brings us together with a bipartisan bill that no one likes! # Continue reading
Originally published in the Philadelphia Daily News, August 5, 2009 http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/52498012.html IN THE SEARCH for how to pay for health care reform, pundits and some senators keep talking about taxing employer-based health care benefits despite the fact such a tax would fall not on the wealthy – whose incomes shot up while their taxes were being sliced by the Bush administration – but on the middle class. Taxing employer-based health care makes sense in theory – when things are cheaper we buy more of them. If everything but medical care is taxed, perhaps we do buy more of it than we need. But I’m a community organizer as well as an academic, and I like to make the case for abstract ideas by telling personal stories. It struck me that among the hundreds of stories I’ve collected this year about people and their health care, I’ve heard none that support… Continue reading
I know you are all have been working hard for health care reform. But I need you to do a bit more. Because the debate about health care in Washington has come down to this: If the insurance companies win, we lose. HCAN and our partners are doing rallies all over the country to make the fundamental choice crystal clear. You can help by coming out to fight for quality affordable health care at one of our rallies across the state: Big Insurance: Sick of It Rallies for Health Insurance Reform Tuesday, September 22 Click more for locations and to RSVP for events in Pittsburgh, Williamsport, Wilkes-Barre, Erie, and Philadelphia Continue reading
Here is your opportunity. All over the country, on Tuesday, September 22, Health Care For American Now, MoveOn, the AFL-CIO, SEIU and other groups are holding Big Insurance: Sick of It rallies. One of three national flagship events is in Philadelphia at 4:45 PM Dilworth Plaza, at the northwest corner of City Hall. Our target is Cigna insurance, whose world headquarters is in Philadelphia Wendell Potter, the former Cigna executive who has been speaking out about the awful practice of insurances companies will speak. So will Arlene Holt Baker, the Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO. The eyes of the country will be on us, so we need a HUGE TURNOUT for this event. So please, RSVP for the event here, right now. And please invite your friends to this event today. Continue reading
Cool RT @SenArlenSpecter $28 million in new funding for a high speed Maglev train from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. http://tinyurl.com/r5me7c # Home run!!! RT @tomfitzgerald 2/3 of 427 adults who watched speech support O propoals, insta-CNN poll says. # petition @CongJoeWilson to apologize for yelling “YOU LIE” in Obama speech, and lying about #hcr http://act.ly/iq RT to sign #p2 # Continue reading