went walking in a light rain in the city and driving with the windows down in the country today. Two of my favorite things to do. # Maybe when this health care campaign is over I’ll be over to go to a movie on Friday night and not fall asleep in the middle. # Continue reading
The Comcast-NBC merger is such a terrible idea from the perspective of consumers that I think we have to fight it. But I’m so certain that Comcast in the long run will make an utter hash of the deal that I almost want to see it go through. The very thing that makes the deal sensible for Comcast—and bad for us—in the short run is exactly what will make it a disaster for Comcast in the long run. Comcast has made it’s money by using its political and economic power to generate monopoly profits. It fears losing that monopoly and wants to use its cash reserves to create a new monopoly. It shouldn’t be allowed to do so. But if it does, the company is utterly unsuited to running businesses that operate in a competitive world and that mangage creative talent. It is likely to fail at doing so. Continue reading
In rallies, media events, press conferences, blogs and op-ed pieces, we are making it clear to the American people that if the insurance companies win, we all lose. That effort is bearing fruit. Despite the disappointing action of the Senate Finance Committee, pressure for the public health insurance option is building. Polls show strong support for the public option. A majority of the Senate is now clearly in favor. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is working to figure out how to move a public option through the complicated Senate procedures has said that the final health bill will have a public option. See http://www.lvrj.com/news/breaking_news/Reid-Final-health-bill-will-have-… But to make that happen we need to keep the pressure on. So I’m asking you to come out on Tuesday, October 6, at 11:30 am at 1601 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia to join us as we declare CIGNA’s world head quarters a crime… Continue reading
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