Do you want to help Rush, Fox & the right-wing defeat health care reform? Then … Do nothing. Definitely don’t click this link: Volunteer to Move Health Care Reform Next Week. Just do nothing. Continue reading
We are expecting a critical vote on historic health care reform legislation next week in the House of Representatives. And we need your help right now. Continue reading
Everyone who favors health care reform, including me, is worried about the Blue Dog Democrats. As the state director of Health Care For America Now in PA, I’m concerned about the five blue dog Democrats in Pennsylvania and our staff, volunteers and I are working as hard as we can to keep all of them on the straight and narrow. We have a long week ahead of us dealing with the Blue Dogs. But I think we are going to win, for two reasons. One is the enormous pressure we are going to bring on Blue Dogs, from our coalition partners and the activists we identified. I’m building and talking and writing about that pressure fifteen hours a day, so I won’t say that much about it here. Instead I want to consider a second reason: given the political logic of the moment, while a lot of the Blue Dogs… Continue reading
We are reaching a critical moment in the effort to reform health care in America this year, a moment in which we will find out who is serious about addressing the health care crisis we have we have in this country and who is not. Everyone knows problem: health insurance for the middle class is becoming more and more uncertain for two reasons. The first is that that the costs of health insurance are rising far faster than wages. Health insurance premiums have doubled over the last 9 years, going up three times faster than wages. As costs rise, health care becomes unaffordable for individuals and businesses drop health care coverage for their employees, The second reason is that insurance companies deny people coverage and care. In the fine print of insurance policies are provisions that limit lifetime benefits that enable insurance companies to decide that a treatment we need… Continue reading
NOBODY will benefit more from the health care reform bill, HR 3200, now making its way through the House of Representatives than the commonwealth’s small businesses. Yet some of the official lobbyists for small business, such as the National Federation of Independent Businesses, are fighting to block it. The NFIB doesn’t actually represent most small businesses in the country. And what’s worse—this is the dirty little secret of health-care lobbying— the leaders of this and other business advocacy organizations are fighting insurance reform out of their own self-interest, not out of a concern for their own members. Continue reading
Created with flickr slideshow. Here are some photos of our event with Representative Joe Sestak, Senator Specter; Dr. Valerie Arkoosk of the National Physicians Alliance; Jeff Blum, executive director of US Action; Ed Mooney of the Communication Workers of America; Jeff Garis, chanter extraordinaire of Penn Action, and the whole incredible scene. More photos and video coming this week.k. Continue reading
In May and June, HCAN PA has ramped up its efforts. We are holding four to five health care events every week. The picture, which links to a short video, is from a Health Care Rally in Pittsburgh on May 28 which came a day after we did a Health Care Town Hall in Erie and two days after an event in Montgomery County. (Our rally was held at Mellon Square underneath Senator Specter’s office, to which I was pointing.) Continue reading
I’ve been to a lot of political rallies and events. And, if truth be told, a lot of them are pretty dreary. Speeches go on for too long. And pretty much every rally is subject to the funny observation I first hear from Mo Udall about political conventions, after the first 15 minutes “everything has been said but not everyone has said it.” I think the Pennsylvania town hall yesterday was a little different, especially at the beginning and the end. Continue reading
Pennsylvania Health Care activists have been on the move for months, holding four to five events every week all over the state. And tomorrow, about 2,000 of us are heading to Washington DC for a national rally followed by a Pennsylvania Town Hall. I know that many of you wish you could join us. We do have a few seats left in Pittsburgh but otherwise the 20 HCAN buses and the 16 buses being run by our labor partners are pretty much full. If we had enough buses, we could have taken 5,000 people from PA to Washington. But you can watch our Pennsylvania Town Hall tomorrow, Thursday June 25th at 1:30 pm, on a webcast at http://tinyurl.com/mab6sp Senator Specter and PA Representatives Dahlkemper, Doyle, Sestak and Schwartz will be speaking at the Town Hall along with many of the leaders of HCAN and our coalition partners in the state.… Continue reading
Revised on September 9, 2009 Even as Obama was hitting a home run tonight, I saw posts on Twitter and Facebook by usually savvy people who repeated what has become the latest delusion on the single payer left: that if Obama had started with single payer as his negotiating point, we would have no trouble winning a public option now. That this is an error is easy to see if you recognize that Congressional negotiations are not at all like contract negotiations. It’s not a matter of each side making and offer and then moving slowly to something in the middle. There are two keys to success when Presidents try to build support in Congress. The first is to create as big a block of supporters as you can to start with. Without a lot of supporters at the beginning of the effort, other members of Congress won’t think there is… Continue reading