We don’t yet know much about what’s in the compromise the Senate 10 has come up with. But what I’m hearing does not leave me enthused. Rather it leaves me worried. Continue reading
I sent this as an email to 15,000 of my closest friends, the health care activists in Pennsylvania, this morning. Dear Friends, We have another day or two until the Senate takes up health care reform. Before that happens I want to give you an update about where our campaign is going and what you can do to move it forward. Where we are At this point in our campaign, the most important thing I want to say is that we progressives have to learn how to win. It’s been a long time since we have enacted major legislation that dramatically improve the lives of working people and the middle class. And while, we have built a huge movement and made a lot of progress this year, I’m still not sure we know how win. In saying that we have to learn how to win, I mean to say a… Continue reading
Members of the HCAN coalition are divided about the Stupak amendment to HR 3962. Some are pro-life. Most of are pro-choice. As a organization, however, we are working to remove the Stupak amendment from both the Senate bill and the bill that comes out of the conference committee. What’s Wrong With The Stupak Amendment In our view, the Stupak amendment is not about federal funding for abortion. It is much broader than that. It prevents millions of women from getting insurance coverage that covers abortion services and that is widely available now. Continue reading
Introduction I want to set out why, after over twenty five years of thinking and writing about health care reform, and two and a half years as a health care activist, I’ve always been ambivalent about single payer. That ambivalence is well known to progressive activists in the state. To judge by what they say to each other in emails that friends forward to me, let alone from what they’ve said out in the open, I’ve been public enemy number for single payer advocates in Pennsylvania for a long time. Partly that’s because I’m the leader of HCAN in Pennsylvania, and we have created the largest issue campaign in Pennsylvania history behind the Obama health care plan, a plan that has a very good chance of being enacted this year and that embodies our principles not those held by advocates of single payer. But that’s by no means the whole… Continue reading
Pennsylvania HCAN and our partners did another seventeen events to push health care reform along this week. Click on the links to go to detailed accounts of these events along with pictures and press reports. Our Erie Coalition met Congresswoman Dahlkemper at the Erie Airport on Sunday November 8 to thank her for vote. We held a health are forum in Williamsport the same day with citizens who have been active in lobbying Congressman Carney. We did six drop-in thank you events at the offices of Congressmembers Brady, Carney Doyle, Kanjorski, Schwartz and Sestak on Monday November 9. We did a thank you event for Representative Patrick Murphy on Tuesday November 10. And we did nine other events on Thursday November 12, thank you events for Representatives Carney, Dahlkemper, Doyle, Kanjorkski and Schwartz who voted for the legislation and shame on you events for four Representatives… Continue reading
Some progressives, motivated in part by Dennis Kucinich’s vote against HR 3926 are expressing disappointment with and even opposition to the health care reform legislation going through Congress. While HR 3926 is not perfect—and the anti-abortion language added to it is terrible and will, we believe, be removed later in the process—it is a bill progressives should and must support. In a long post I’ve explained in detail why I think single payer advocates like Kucinich are misguided in opposing the bill. Here, in this short version, I want to summarize the case for progressives giving active support to the legislation. Continue reading
This is a long post. But if you want to know what’s in the bill, why progressive should support it and why they should not pay attention to Dennis Kucinich or other single payer critics of the bill, this is a good place to start. In one of the political traditions in which I was raised, one of the more useful epithets was “infantile leftist.” An infantile leftist was someone who took the most extreme left position even though it made little sense as either policy or politics. And they did it, primarily for internal political reasons—to win support on the left—or to show themselves and others that they are more pure or progressive or left than anyone else in the room. That phrase came to mind when I saw that Representatives Kucinich and Massa had voted against HR 3692 because it was not single payer and even more when… Continue reading
All the work we have been doing to create a guarantee of quality affordable health care for all is coming to a point: The House vote on HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act is scheduled to take place this Saturday, November 7 at around 6:00 pm. The vote will be close. We don’t know whether we it will pass or not. It really depends on you. Three members of Congress in Pennsylvania–Jason Altmire, Chris Carney, and Paul Kanjorski–undecided. If we can get more of their constituents to call them, they would be more likely to decide in favor of reform. Continue reading
Last Friday, close to twenty advocacy groups and labor unions came together in front of the Loew’s Hotel in Center City Philadelphia to protest Tom Donhaue, the President of US Chamber of Commerce, who was speaking there. And, in the process, we learned something about the nature of political struggle in the United State today and about what we progressives must to do be successful We were there because, on issue after issue, Donahue has lead the US Chamber of Commerce to stand with the biggest, and most politically connected, corporations in the United States, and with their immensely overpaid chief executives, against the interests of not just the public at large, but most small and large businesses in the United States. Continue reading
I spoke tonight at the beginning of the health care week being put on by the Penn Democrats. With the news that Harry Reid had decided to put a public option in the bill he intends to bring to the floor, it was a good night to be speaking. I gave a different kind of speech than usual, putting our campaign for health care reform in the context of the revival of progressive politics. I’ll write that up soon. But on this very good day for our campaign when we have seen some inkling of success coming from our hard work over the past fifteen months, I did want to post the following reconstruction of my closing remarks. I said at the beginning of my talk that the election of Barack Obama was the start of the rebirth of progressive politics in America. And I said that to keep this… Continue reading