Health Care Coverage

You can’t be denied health coverage!
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourHealth/you-cant-be-denied-health-coverage.aspx

Like a herd

The Democratic representatives represent a very diverse group of independent-thinking Democratic voters, so it’s not surprising when all Democratic leaders do not vote the same.  It’s a heterogenous group. 

The Republicans are a homogenous group and it’s also not suprising when they tend to vote in single-minded “herd” mentality.  But how…out of 178 Republicans…does not one of them break the lock-stop marching orders?  I watched the health-care debates for hours and as was pointed out numerous times – the things the Republicans want in the reform are almost all accounted for.   A bill can’t be perfect for everyone, of course.  But still – not 1?  Moooooooo.   Baaaaaaaaaa.  What a herd. 

They sat back in their chairs for 8 years and drank from the lap of luxury.  Health Care Reform during Republican majority?  Never even mentioned.  Abortion changes during Republican majority, Republican president, and Conservative Supreme Court?  Not even touched.  Now that Americans voted for expanded Health Care (see presidential election of 2008, and see how often healthcare reform was promised on Obama’s campaign, and see how many votes Obama collected), the Republican party still sits on their haunches and merely tries to put sticks in the spokes of wheel of progress.  The party of “No”.

One Step Closer to Health Care Reform

Yay!!!!!

Senate Democrats clear health care hurdle
12/21/2009 12:00 PM

WASHINGTON – A crucial, middle-of-the-night test vote behind them, Senate Democrats prepared Monday for more votes at odd hours in their drive to pass historic legislation to cover the uninsured and to try to curb rising medical costs. (God almighty these medical costs eat up a larger piece of my income every year.  Pretty soon 50% of my pay will go to insurance companies!  And without this I’m sure when my company lays me off at 58 and I’m no longer covered that they’ll deny me coverage – who wants to cover old people?) 

All 58 Democrats and the Senate’s two independents held together early Monday against unanimous Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul . They provided the exact 60-40 margin needed to shut down a threatened GOP filibuster.

The next vote is now expected around 7:20 a.m. EST Tuesday. Obama called the vote “a big victory for the American people,” adding that it will make a “tremendous difference for families, for seniors, for businesses and for the country as a whole.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul

Christmas Card for Senators

This year, when you’re writing holiday cards to your friends and loved ones, there are two more people who need to hear from you: Senator John Cornyn and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (Or your the Senators from your state!).

With the Senate deep in final negotiations — and a compromise just introduced that increases choice and drives costs down — your senators need to understand how urgent reform really is.

So we’ve come up with a unique way for you to get the message across — by sending your senators a card with your holiday wish for the season.

Send a holiday card to your senators, telling them that your wish this season is for them to pass health insurance reform.

Since the full Senate began debating reform just over two weeks ago, approximately 224,000 Americans have lost their health insurance, while spiraling costs have forced countless more into bankruptcy or foreclosure.

That’s a big number — it’s as many people as live in a city like Baton Rouge, and more than live in Reno.

This crisis affects everyone in our community. It could be a father down the street who now won’t be able to pay for care when his son breaks his leg playing soccer, or a daughter who must watch helplessly as her newly-uninsured mother gets a breast cancer diagnosis she can’t afford to treat.

Every day brings thousands more stories of heartbreak and struggle that just shouldn’t be in a nation as blessed as ours.

So please take a moment to cut through the noise in D.C. with your simple holiday wish: affordable, quality health care for every American family.

Send your holiday card for health reform today:

http://my.barackobama.com/HolidayCard

Thanks,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Go Health Care Reform!

“The country suffers when there is a failure to act on serious challenges that millions of ordinary Americans face in their daily lives,”  Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

Denying coverage is crap and it needs to end.  It needs to change and since the GOP’s only wish is for everything in the world to never ever change – the Democrat plan is what needs to get passed. 

We need reform. 

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time”
      — Obama

Does Republican Health Care include Death Panels and Abortion?

“Reckless Rhetoric”: Major hypocrisy on health care reform. 

The proposal to reimburse doctors that was so offensive was the end-of-life counseling (newsflash, we’re mortal) – the “death panels” as they were called were a plot to “kill grandma”.

Imagine the awkwardness now that the Republican party’s own health care provider (Cigna) already has in place and is currently promoting end-of-life counseling / death panels.

But that’s just the icing on the cake. The RNC health plan from Cigna that they’ve been using for 18 years, also covers elective abortion services.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/34005238#33981053

We can assume that their health care proposal (if they actually had a proposal) would look like the plan they designed for themselves.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/14/rnc-health-grandma/
http://www.sodahead.com/other/the-rnc-health-provider-offers-end-of-life-counseling-death-panels/blog-190977/
http://www.cigna.com/healthinfo/aa129753.html

Pro-Life FOR Health Care Reform

The pro-life movement should be supporting Obama and the Democrats in the Health Care Reform movement.  After all, this plan removes one major obstacle for the Pro-Life movement.  If the federal government takes away a women’s right to choose, then the high cost of medical and pharmaceutical services for the mother and baby must be considered.  Unless, it’s already covered by Obama’s health care reform. 

Conservatives (specifically the anti-abortionists) should stop to consider their goals and then embrace health care reform. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/

The anti-abortion platform would still have to account for other massive increases in government social spending that goes along with protecting and monitoring the unborn life as well as the newborn.  If the mother is going to drink and smoke and eat nothing but McD’s because she doesn’t want the baby…then really, you have to ask if its worth the high financial cost and tax burden.   Conclusive research shows that leads to medical problems and behavioral problems.  Caring for the unwanted is admirable, but it results in much higher taxes.  I don’t see a lot of people lining up to adopt babies from inner-city women who smoke and do drugs (I certainly haven’t seen many white conservatives in this line).  But - the anti-abortionists will have to have a plan to do something with the kids once they’re here.  And if all the Bristol’s and Levi’s in suburbia drop out of high school and forego college and start raising kids at 16, that has a financial cost to society. 

That anti-abortion platform uses a lot of tax dollars.

Nationwide Health Care Reform Ads

Go Earth! –

I wrote to you last week asking for your help to produce and air a powerful new ad about why doctors and nurses around the country are standing up for health insurance reform. The response was extraordinary — thousands of OFA supporters chipped in over $600,000 in just a few days, blowing away our $300,000 goal.

So now we have a tremendous opportunity. We’re putting the finishing touches on the ad, just in time for a week of crucial negotiations in Congress that could determine the final shape of health reform. If we reach $1 million by Wednesday, we can pull the trigger on an ambitious plan.

We’ll focus the energy of staff across the country on this key campaign, hold events with doctors and nurses, and air the ad coast-to-coast to elevate their trusted voices at this critical moment.

Will you donate $15 or more now to help make it happen? https://donate.barackobama.com/HealthAd

 

Thanks, Mitch
P.S. — Last week, we brought doctors and nurses from across the country to the studio to film the ad. Check out behind-the-scenes pictures of the ad you’re funding and chip in to help us put it on the air at this vital time.

The Public Option

“We need this option because the insurance companies have failed to meet their obligation” to the public, said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., accusing firms of putting profits over their customers. He said that without his proposal, consumers would face substantial premium increases once health care legislation takes effect.

Republicans countered that private companies would eventually be forced out of business, and argued that millions would be forced to get their insurance from the government.

Let me let this sink in.  Private health insurance giants would be forced out of business by the goverment plan because presumably, the private companies would not be able to run as efficiently as a goverment option, or provide the same level of service as a government option.  WHAT??  You Republicans spend 1/2 the time telling me that government run, socialized programs, are terribly innefficient and far inferior to private offerings – then the other 1/2 telling me how a government option would be so superior to the private option that these poor, deprived, only-doing-what’s-best-for-Americans, private companies would have to shut their ruby-encrusted doors. 

Which is it?? 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlMpJGn28kqCcgU-aGcYE_ZHW-ywD9B1529G0

Open Letter to Burgess

Open Letter to Michael Burgess (R-TX)

Seemingly every year my health care costs continue eating into my income.  Every couple of years the premiums go up, and with that the co-pays and deductibles also go up.  I am getting less AND paying more for it.  

 

Last year my deductibles increased 500%, my office co-pay by 50%, prescription co-pay by 100%, annual checkups for my children are no longer covered past the age of TWO, my dental insurance was completely removed and replaced by a “discount” program.  In exchange for all these cuts…my premiums increased more than 17%, Michael.  That blows away the CPI.  How can you say that we do not need reform? 

 

And when I need it most, the insurance companies are allowed to simply reject me.  They can even reject me just because I took a cancer screening test under my previous insurer. (Doctor said it’s possible it’s cancer and if so, early detection is the key. I take the test, it’s negative, covered by insurance, no problem.  Until years later the next insurance company considers me a risk and rejects coverage and I spend my retirement savings in just a couple of years). 

 

How you can stand up as a representative of the people of Texas and say that you hope everything stays the same is shocking. 

 

How is it that there is no reform offered by the Republicans?  Your inability to propose any other solutions is a message that you believe this system does not need change.  It appears to me that the only reason for this viewpiont is because you’re simply being contrarian to everything a Democrat proposes. 

 

For example, tax credits to purchase private insurance: When a Republican says it, it’s a great idea. 

 

Another exmampe: You also say you have many questions about the details of the proposal.  The same proposal that you and other lawmakers have complained is TOO long and TOO detailed. 

 

It’s a decent health care system…IF you’re between 25 and 50 and employed by a medium-to-large company. 

If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.