It never fails to amaze me how incredibly warped the debate in Congress is on health reform. While majorities of the public likely favor Medicare-for-All, this Congress full of shills dismisses the idea out of hand.
Time to fight back. Call your representative and senators now and tell them to cosponsor HR 676 and S. 703, vote for the Weiner amendment and S. 703 when they come to the floor of the House and Senate soon, and retain the Kucinich amendment in HR 3200!
Just in case you need to know what these are:
HR 676 is the The United States National Health Care Act, which would simply expand Medicare eligibility to all Americans.
The Weiner amendment is an amendment to the main healthcare bill, HR 3200, that is going to receive a vote on the House floor this year. This is very important because Medicare-for-All has never gotten a floor vote before!
S. 703 was introduced by the great Senator Bernie Sanders to create a single payer health care system. It will also likely receive a floor vote this year!
On S. 703 the situation is about as utterly outrageous as could it possibly be--our revoltingly corrupt Senate has NOT ONE cosponsor yet. Let's see which one will be first.
Finally, the Kucinich amendment removes any possible federal legal barriers (namely by the Employment Retirement Insurance Security Act, ERISA) to the creation of state single payer health care systems like the one California's legislature has now approved two years in a row.
Now that we know what everything is, here's the action list!
- CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE before their office closes today through this easy call in system. If you do not know if they have cosponsored HR 676, check the list of cosponsors first. If they are NOT cosponsoring, then urge them to do so and vote yes on the Weiner amendment to HR 3200. One script to read on the phone is:
I am calling to urge Representative _____ to cosponsor HR 676, The United States National Health Care Act, which would extend Medicare coverage to all Americans.
I also urge her to support Rep. Weiner's Medicare-for-All amendment to HR 3200, which will receive a floor vote in September.
Finally, please fight to retain Rep. Kucinich's amendment to HR 3200 which would give states the ability to create their own single-payer systems.
On the other hand, if they ARE cosponsoring, be sure to thank them! However, still tell them to vote yes on the Weiner amendment because a few Congresspeople have actually backed out after endorsing HR 676. How disgraceful!
- Call your senators and tell them to cosponsor S. 703 and vote yes when Bernie Sanders brings it to the floor of the Senate later this year. Let's see who can get the first cosponsor on board! Here's a script to read on the phone:
I am calling to urge Senator _____ to support S. 703. This bill will be brought to the Senate floor later this year by Senator Bernie Sanders.
S. 703 is single-payer healthcare legislation that would save Americans billions of dollars while providing universal, comprehensive coverage to all Americans.
Don't forget to explain what each bill does.
- E-mail your representative about the Weiner amendment here.
- Call members of the House HELP Committee and tell them to keep the Kucinich amendment. They have the most control over this.
California is very close to passing single payer and needs your support. Help keep the Kucinich amendment in the final health bill! Then if we can succeed in electing a single payer supporter (such as Jerry Brown) Governor in 2010, we likely win! This might be the most likely route to national single payer.
Let's add:
- 1/2. (For Californians only) Write and call your state senator and representative about SB 840, the California single payer bill. You can check here if you don't know who they are.
- (Everyone) Write a letter on paper to your US representative and senators. You can easily look up the address of your representative here and the address of your senators here. Congresspeople take written letters more seriously than e-mails because of the time that has to be spent in preparing and physically sending a letter. Physical letters show your commitment. You can use my letter to my senators as a reference. It began:
I am deeply saddened by your refusal to support Medicare-for-All, or a single payer national health insurance system, in the United States of America. The United States currently spends 16% of its GDP on health care, far higher than any other industrialized nation. It is estimated that 31% of expenditures in our system are devoted to administrative overhead--double the Canadian figure. Even not considering the inhumane plight of our 47 million uninsured and even greater number of under-insured, our nation would be far better off simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.
End your letter with a concise request, because staffers may not bother to read the entire body. Since I was writing to senators, mine ended with:
To sum up, most important is that you endorse S. 703. Secondly, please do not vote for any health care bill this year lacking public programs as its largest tenet.
If you've done the above five tasks, then you can move on to these:
- Find your local Healthcare-NOW! organization and get involved offline. Sustained involvement in your community is the best way by far to promote change. Some local organizations also have a mailing list that they will gladly add you to containing updates about nearby events. Don't miss this opportunity!
- Attend a Medicare-for-All event in your area. Healthcare-NOW! features a list of nationally recognized events, and you can often find other events by staying in contact with local organizations. As a New Jerseyite, the rally for Medicare-for-All in New York City on September 29th looks like a good choice to me!
September 29th, 2009, New York, NY
Medicare for All March and Rally
Rally at 4PM at Bristol-Myers Squibb, 345 Park Ave. and 51st St.
March at 5PM to Aetna, 99 Park Ave. and 40th St.
More info at www.phimg.org.
- Make a donation to Healthcare-NOW! Big insurance, big pharma, and the provider lobbies have a massive financial advantage over activist organizations. We can only go so far with no budget!
- Don't forget to tell others online. Daily Kos is a useful and large forum on which to share ideas. Facebook members can easily join the Healthcare-NOW! Facebook group. You can also blog on other places like TPM Cafe.
- Support challengers of candidates in your area who don't favor Medicare-for-All despite constituent support (this link has good info but may be out of date). And many, many DON'T, as you can see by looking at the Congressional corruption meter below. From the link, in my state we have:
NJ-01 Rob Andrews
This guy ran in 2008 against single payer supporter Mahdi Ibn Ziya in a district leaning Democrat by fourteen points and won because he had nearly fifty times the funding. We can see on OpenSecrets that his top industry supporter was Health Professionals! What a total shill!
Please RECOMMEND this diary to ensure that others see how they can call out this corrupt Congress that is snubbing its nose at constituents!