Dear [hipparchia],
This week, Congress will make crucial decisions on two issues: single-payer health care and the widening war in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
1. Single Payer Health Care
On Monday, the for-profit health industry promised President Obama to cut costs by 1.5%, but we can only laugh.
For-profit insurers will always put profits first - ahead of Obama's cost-saving goals and ahead of our health care needs, even our lives.
The only serious way to reduce health care costs is to move from for-profit health insurance to a single-payer system like Medicare.
Thankfully, Rep. John Conyers has a serious single-player plan, H.R. 676, which has 75 co-sponsors. But we need 218 votes in the House to pass H.R. 676, so we must pressure every other Representative .
First, sign our petition and forward it to everyone you know who is sick of - or sick from - for-profit health insurance:
http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-petition Then, if your Representative not a co-sponsor, call him/her at 202-224-3121 and demand to know why not.
Then tell the Senate Finance Committee to stop laughing at (and arresting!) single payer advocates like us, and put a single-payer plan "on the table":
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum982.php And if you're near Washington DC on Wednesday May 13, join Progressive Democrats of America in a Day of Action for Single-Payer Health Care:
http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2009-05-11-12-29-05-news. php
2. The Widening War in Afghanistan/Pakistan (Af-Pak)This week, Congress will vote on another $85 billion for Af-Pak and Iraq. But our careless bombing in Af-Pak is only making things worse. And there are horrifying new reports we used white phosphorus against civilians.
This week, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) will propose an amendment for an Afghanistan Exit Strategy. Please sign our new petition to your Representatives and Senators:
http://www.democrats.com/afghan-exit-petition Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
p.s. Thanks to Ed Schultz for asking fans of The Ed Show to sign our single-payer petition. Many of us love Ed's radio show, and now we can see him fight for working families every weekday at 6 p.m. ET on MSNBC. Visit:
http://WeGotEd.com
While you're at wegoted.com, vote no.
![[PDA - Heathcare NOT Warfare - Sign the Petition.]](http://pdamerica.org/images/ads/HealthNotWar_final.jpg)
5 comments:
Oh, I'm sure we can expect something Even Worse down the pipe. It's amazing what's not even part of the discussion. More amazing that the argument is framed in last-decades' terms...as though no one realizes that the people worried about continued insurance coverage now includes those masses of middle class suburbanite voters sweating out the prospect of another jobless recovery, as though choice of doctor and a decade-distant threat of Medicare insolvency around scares anybody right now. As if they just didn't gift the banks a few trillion, with no questions asked.
NPR covered the moment of protest by some single-payer advocacy group, whom Max Baucus genteely had arrested. Interesting times, hipp. I imagined the woman yelling on the NPR report was you.
K
keifus!!!!!!
[can you tell i haven't been getting out much lately?]
arrested![i had tried to embed the video earlier in a post but something went awry]
pnhp is my go-to source for single payer.
yep, last decade was sooooo... last decade.
and the trouble with what they're doing now is they're trying to sell us the same thing -- 'managed competition' -- and composing -- in secret, yet again -- what is probably going to be a gigantic and convoluted bill -- just like last time. the only difference is this time congress is putting it together, instead of the white house.
that seems to be the only lesson they learned from last decade -- to let congress do the spadework, instead of the white house doing the spadework.
what they don't get is that we want to be able to go to the doctor when we get sick.
yes, it's essentially another [expensive] bailout for the financial industry, what with the insurance industry being part of the financial industry now, instead of its own separate industry.
the analysis that the financial industry [or possibly multi-national corporations, no matter what their industry] has captured the government strikes me as depressingly accurate.
It's been kind of a hectic year for me, too. Blogging and surfing about both slackened.
And on health care, I can only assume we're all going to get scrood. I wonder if any European firms are hiring? Last I checked they had plenty of lazy engineers already.
K
i believe you and i were weighing the relative merits of french vs italian cooking awhile back iirc....
next best thing -- federal job, dood. they do seem to be looking for engineers this week, though possibly not a lot in your specialty.
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