One of the promising outcomes of last week’s activism and lobbying on behalf of single payer health care (as embodied in John Conyers’s bill HR 676, which now has almost 80 co-sponsors), was a meeting between advocacy groups, HR 676 co-sponsors, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Hearings on health care are fast approaching in several House committees, and Hoyer needs to commit to including a fair examination of the merits of single payer in all of them.
A cut-n-paste from the action email I just received from PDA:
In our last email to you, we told you about our meeting with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and our recent efforts to ensure that single-payer healthcare is part of the discussion in the people’s house.
Since then we’ve compiled this video: please watch it and pass it around.
Our coalition is picking up steam and a real chance for the merits of single-payer to be discussed in the House exists, as long as we keep up the pressure.
Please call Majority Leader Hoyer at (202) 225 3130 and thank him for listening to us. Tell him you support the witnesses who were removed from the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Healthcare hearing. Single-payer healthcare should be presented as a viable option to reforming the American system of healthcare. Add that you hope bi-weekly meetings led by Rep. John Conyers with single-payer supporters in the House will occur.
Send an email, too.
In addition to those talk points, I would suggest pointing out that you understand that "single payer" and "public option" are not the same thing, and that representation of public-option proposals is not sufficient.
The big-money liberal/progressive advocacy groups pushing the public option (whom selise and I routinely thrash about the head and neck whenever they post here) are doing first-class work in holding the line against Democratic cave-ins to industry-funded attempts to scuttle any broadening of government involvement in health care financing. Bless them for that, although in my view they’re more concerned about industry/Rethug socialist-bashing than poll data warrant. OTOH, as commenter bob_h noted this morning on Americablog,
A Democratic Congress that caves on Guantanamo and carrying guns in National Parks cannot be expected to show profiles in courage on healthcare, can it?
Still, legislators need to hear from people who understand that even the most "robust" public option would already constitute a Democratic cave-in to the diseconomies and injustices of perpetuating the private insurance industry.
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Almost forgot: Bill Moyers’ Journal for Friday, May 22, will address single payer, including reporting from last week’s events.
i called, they said they would pass my words along
Not so brave when confronted in the real world.
*************
” But activists from Single Payer Action were out front, waiting to question Baucus about why, over the past two weeks, he ordered thirteen of them arrested, handcuffed, and charged with “disruption of Congress.”
Upon seeing the activists gathered at the front door, Baucus drove down a back alley to a rear service entrance.
The activists followed him down the back alley.
Baucus pulled up to Kaiser’s service entrance.
A large metal door opened.
“I asked Baucus to roll down his window so I could ask him a question,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action and the first of person arrested at the Senate Finance Committee on May 5. “But he shook his head no.”
Baucus drove into the service entrance and the security guards rolled down the metal door. “
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/21-4
pussy…..my cat Harry has bigger balls
Thanks!
FWIW, this was the email I just sent to Hoyer (not necessarily better than, but just different from, PDA’s scripted text):
thanks for this post! recommended.
will make some calls later today or tomorrow morning.
imo ralphbon right on with suggestion:
was going to write something re this when it came up on previous thread, but comments closed before i had the chance. might try later here (if ralphbon doesn’t mind).
Seconded.
He probably does ’cause Baucus doesn’t appear to have any..’g’.
Dahling, why on earth would I mind?
I’ve been periodically following today’s Schumer thread over at the Orange Satan. At one point, a questioner asked for affirmation that Schumer will support a vigorous public option, and by accident, Schumer (or at any rate, the Schumer-bot) responded with a boilerplate answer about single payer. (He supports it, dontcha know, but considers it politically unfeasible at present.)
I suspect Schumer’s aide might have been confused about the difference between vigorous public option and single payer and so pushed the boilerplate button for responding to single payer questions. It was almost identical to a response to a single payer question elsewhere in the thread.
As noted in the Jason Rosenbaum thread from the other day, Howard Dean refers to the public plan portion of a public option system as a form of single payer, which is just patently dishonest.