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Let's Get It Done: Health Care Events This Week
Submitted by Marc Stier on Mon, 08/31/2009 - 5:59pm.
Congress returns to work next week. So this is our last chance to tell them:
Let's Get It Done! Enact Health Insurance Reform in 2009!
We've beaten back right wing opposition in the last few weeks and emerged with more support for real reform. Now it is time for the final push. Take part in one of the 13 Let's Get It Done events all over Pennsylvania. Tell your Representatives and Senators that it is time for action. They must go back to Washington and move health care reform forward. And tell your friends about the Health Insurance Reform campaign and these events by clicking here.
In the Delaware Valley you can join us at one of two events:
Thursday, September 3, 12:00 noon / 1900 Market Street/ Philadelphia, PA
Public Health Insurance Option or Insurance Companies: Which Side Are You On? Rally at Blue Cross and then march to Senator Bob Casey's office in support of the public option in the Kennedy HELP Committee bill.
RSVP here
Saturday, September 5, 10:30 am / Lions Park / Bristol, PA / 10:30 am
Rally for Health Insurance Reform with Representative Patrick Murphy
After these events, we want to ramp up phone banking from Philadelphia into other parts of the state where we have few shaky Democrats. You can phone bank at home. Just get in touch with me at MarcStier@hcanpa.org and I'll send you a list and talking points. Or come to one of the phone bank events we will start having next week. Details soon.
RSVP here
Back to Planet Earth: Why we heart budget reconciliation
CBO projections will rule at the end, and the budget numbers are with us not them.
Basically, everyone agrees that once you get health care reform to budget reconciliation, the plan with the best numbers from the Congressional Budget Office will be the best bet to move forward.
As public option supporters know (as well as other sane people who can do math, own a calculator, or are simply immune to now-debunked Cold War ideology that said ignore the facts and stick to the religious faith that big companies are always cheaper and more efficient than government programs) a plan with a big public option -- sized to have negotiating muscle to drive down health care costs -- is most cost efficient.
As autumn's cooler, saner winds blow in, folks like Matt Yglesias who recently feared for the public option, are starting to see this logical path to its possible success.
Now to get the Villagers to acknowledge and to get to 51...
In other news not supposed to happen, the Gang of Six is dead
Reports Ezra Klein.
But all August I read that they ruled my hc reform world!
Huh.
If you didn't know better, you'd almost think the media were cynical and right-leaning sometimes.
The right wing killed bi-partisanship
as I've been saying they would for two weeks.
Reconciliation is going to be complicated as we have to figure out what goes in the budget process and what doesn't.
But the stuff that doesn't--regulations on insurance companies and the individual mandate, for example--are broadly popular. It will be hard for Ds and even some Rs to vote against it. 60 votes won't be all that hard to reach.
Sam is right that the public option clearly reduces costs and we need to keep them down to meet the five year budget plan under reconciliation. So that will help build support for the public option.
Any there are 44 firm public votes for it and another five or six who say they will vote for it privately and of the remaining 8 or 9 Ds are many usually progressive members.
It ain't over yet, but I think we are going to get a good bill if we can get Max Baucus to move a Democratic majority bill in Senate Finance by October 15.
I'll be glad
when I can go back to knowing by the title if a post is about the state budget or national health care reform.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Hey, they had two friggin' months to get out of headlines
not my fault!
(BOTH covered at tomorrow's PFC Meetup, btw.)
One major problem
The major problem is that, law apparently isn't passed in the 'real world,' where Dems have solid majorities in both houses of Congress, and where surveys consistently favor a strong public option or even single-payer health care reform. Rather, policy appears to be made in an alternative universe where Chuck Grassley + Mike Enzi are considered to be GOP moderates with whom one can actually negotiate.
The main problem w/the Dems' health care strategy is that they seem to have forgotten a primary rule of negotiation: your first offer shouldn't be what you expect to have as a final compromise. Single-payer should have been the Dems' opening offer, w/a public option alongside of private plans as the final compromise. When you the public option is your first offer, then the final result is almost certain to not include it.
-Z
You forget the second rule of negotiating
Which is to keep your side as united and as strong as possible going into the negotiations.
Single payer would have been a weak opening hand because it would have been opposed by a majority of the country and a majority of Democrats.
What killed health care reform in 94 was all the people who have private health insuance (90% of voters) and who like it (80%) in part because they don't know how bad it is.
But over 75% of the country likes choice and competition...and that makes the Obama proposal a powerful force that created a majority in the House and will do so in the Senate.
It's never really been about negotiating with insurance companies or Republicans.
Insurance companies hate the Obama plan as much as they hate single payer. And no one ever expected more than a handful of Republicans, at best, to support any health care reform. And if they do so, it is because of popular pressure in favor. Without the popular pressure in their districts--which single payer actually would undermine--what possible reason is there for a Republican to want any kind of health care reform?
We didn't need Harry Kalas tonight to call that speech
Outta here. Home run.
Game-changer. Seemingly impossible expectations, and if anything he outdid them.
Exhale.
Ok, back to the fight.
My two-word summary
Epic bitchslap.
-Z
RE: speech coverage, just so you know where we stand
I just visited the top local news sites for each of the 10 largest U.S. cities. That includes:
New York
Los Angeles
Chicago Sun-Times or Tribune (take your pick)
Houston
Phoenix
San Antonio
Dallas
San Diego
San Jose
Care to guess the only major site in the country that doesn't lead with the Obama speech? The ONLY ONE?
That, of course, would be our own philly.com, where Ryan Madson's finally ascending to the closer role so dwarfs any other news, what really is the point of listing it? Certainly not above the fold, right?
When can we get new owners? From, like, anywhere else?
With that, I'm out for the night.
dupe
It's late. Now I'm really out.
Well he did a good job of lowering expectations
and firing up the base by getting us all worried about whether he would support the public plan.
But as I pointed out, there was never any political reason to do that now.
If we can get Republican votes with a more limited public plan AND if reconciliation is impossible, then it makes sense. Not until.
In the meantime, the strategy of defending what is in effect a centrist policy (and I don't think that means a bad policy) from the middle and making the Republicans clearly break with bi-partisanship first (a point we are very close to), made sense.
More on the single payer negotiating strategy
I should ahve just poitnted you to my blog for a detailed argument: http://blog.stier.net/?p=643
hey must go back to
hey must go back to Washington and move health care reform forward. And tell your friends about the Health Insurance Reform campaign...thanks a lot for posting this worthy post....
Daniel Manson