Thursday November 5, 2009, 6:52 am
With or without a "public option" this Bill that is getting too much attention is VERY dangerous to this country, our economy, and to the american people. It needs to die!

Thursday November 5, 2009, 6:57 am
I just got this from Mobilization for Health Care for All

As we send this out 8 people are sitting-in the office of Sen. Joseph Lieberman demanding that he stop taking money from the insurance industry. The massive campaign donations and lobbying spending of the insurance industry is blocking real reform that would provide everyone in America with access to health care. When 45,000 people are dying annually due to lack of health care it is a moral imperative that America act now to provide health care to all. We are able to do this for senior citizens, why not for all Americans?

Please take the following steps:

1. Call Lieberman and tell him to stop taking insurance money. His numbers are: (202) 224-4041and (860) 549-8463.

2. Sign the petition urging Lieberman to stop taking insurance money. Click here to sign the petition now. Urge everyone you know to sign the petition.

3. Make a donation to support the Mobilization. Donate for bail money for those sitting in Lieberman's office.

Since beginning just over one month ago thousands have signed up to participate in "Patients before Profits" sit-ins and over 920 have signed up willing to risk arrest. By the end of this week the Mobilization will have held 32 sit-ins in 28 different cities with more than 150 arrests and over 220 risking arrest. We started out wanting 100 people to risk arrest at "patients before profits" sit-ins and now more than 920 have done so. The Mobilization needs to continue to grow in order to achieve health care for all.

There is anger growing in the country at the failure of Congress to put forward a national health care plan that provides health care to everyone in the United States. It is important that people speak out now to push Congress and the president to achieve this urgent moral imperative. When President Obama ran for office he raised hopes in Americans that health policy would be reformed so that no one would go without health care. When the reform process began he talked about universal coverage now millions will go without health care access ten years from after the reform bill is passed. That is unacceptable. We need to demand that health care reform achieve the basic goal - that no one go without health care in a country as wealthy as America. We can achieve that goal if we speak up now and demand action. The United States has been effectively providing health care to senior citizens for 40 years through Medicare, we can do the same for everyone.

Thank you for your support. Please take action now.

Sincerely,

The Mobilization Team

Thursday November 5, 2009, 7:20 am

I'm so glad you posted this, Jill!

As I stated on your other submission --
Shut Down This Murderous Racket: Change We Need and Crave
It's important for people to understand that a rejection of the Pelosi bill is NOT a rejection of healthcare for all.  These are only 14 of many reasons her proposed "reform" is doomed to fail!
 
The following also pretty much echoes my opinion of the Pelosi bill:
 
Weiner Amendment Vote on Friday Will Fail and Serve as a Cover for Removing Kucinich Amendment
 
by David Swanson AfterDowningStreet.org Nov. 4, 2009
 
Word is that the full House will vote on national single-payer Medicare for All on Friday. This vote is a cover for the removal of an amendment that was in the House “healthcare” bill until Pelosi stripped it out. That amendment would have made it easier for states to enact single-payer, and still would if a conference committee is persuaded to reinstate it.
 
Of course we want to see a vote on a real national healthcare plan like Medicare for All. of course we want it to pass or to come as close as possible. But this vote is not more a real effort than John Conyers’ pseudo-impeachment hearing last July was a real effort to hold Bush accountable. This is a game and we are being played. There has been no debate, no discussion, no mark-up, no amendments. It’s a throw-away vote.
 
And perhaps that hurts nothing. Perhaps a good showing advances the debate in round two. But that’s if there is a round two. We have 57 Democrats who committed in a letter to Pelosi last July to not supporting a bill as lousy as the current one. If even 40 of them keep their word, the bill dies. If some Blue Dogs also vote no, then not even 30 are needed. But what if those members can go home to their constituents and brag about how they voted for single-payer before voting for the insurance corporation bailout? Not a bad deal, eh?
 
Meanwhile the best shot at real healthcare reform, at really saving lives in the near future, sits stewing in state capitals. Some advocates think they can get around restrictions in federal law without the Kucinich Amendment, some don’t. Few have any doubt that insurance companies will sue to prevent any state from providing its residents with healthcare.
 
Canada created a civilized healthcare system in one province first. If California or Ohio or Pennsylvania takes the lead, the United States will follow. The insurance companies know that and fear it and have fought it. The president has fought it on their behalf. The “leadership” in Congress has fought it. Congressman Kucinich and a handful of courageous representatives have pushed back. But we have not had their backs. We need to have their backs right now. Right now. Call your congress member and tell them to tell the leadership to put the Kucinich Amendment back in.
 

Thursday November 5, 2009, 7:58 am
Congress wants to vote on and shoot down the Weiner ammendment so they can say "See, we voted on single payer and it lost." They want to shoot it down so they can put an end to single payer once and for all. Kuccinich said that. He said the Weiner ammendment is a mistake. it is a plan to kill HR 676 permanently.

Thursday November 5, 2009, 9:21 am
 
(From The Pen)
 
Dear Friends and Activists,
 
This is the second one of our brand new direct fax actions on health care reform, the first of which generated tens of thousands of faxes to the White House.
 
This one will add your signature (and any personal comments of your own) to a fax petition with the heading, "Pass Medicare For All Or Pass Nothing", and send it to each of your individual members of
Congress.
 
Fax Action On Medicare for All:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1020.php
 
The fact is that from the moment early on that Max Baucus manipulated the hearings in his Senate committee to keep any spokesperson for single payer from even having a voice at the table, the entire congressional process has been rigged to keep any meaningful reform of our health care system from actually happening. The corporate medical interests whose business it is to gouge the American people have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to literally bribe members of Congress to look the other way, and to try to slam the door on any real reform.
 
But we the American people still have a choice. We can, as the deceivers in Washington hope, remain silent and simply capitulate to the unconscionable. Or in the alternative, we can speak out, and declare that we will not be fooled, that we will not be deceived, that we will not accept outright fraud as the best we get from our representatives in Congress. And speak out we must if we expect a different result.
 
Please go to the action page below now, read the actual text of the fax petition. We think you will find it candid and unequivocal. Then speak out and make your voice heard at this most critical of moments.
 
Fax Action On Medicare for All: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1020.php
 
We are expecting the latest bulk batch of Single Payer Health Care caps to arrive within a couple days. So if you had already requested one in the last week or so, we'll be getting that out to you as fast was we can, so you too can demonstrate your support for REAL health care reform. Or else you can get one from the return page after you submit the fax action page above. Or you can get one directly from the page below.
 
Single Payer Health Care Caps: http://www.peaceteam.net/all_gifts.php
 
And here is the one click Facebook page for this same fax action.
 
Single Payer Amendments Action: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1020
 
And the Twitter reply to send, to send this message to all your members of Congress that way, is @cxs #p1020
 
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
 

Thursday November 5, 2009, 12:38 pm
Thank you Jill for your continued efforts in this area and Janet for connecting me to the story.

Thursday November 5, 2009, 3:53 pm
We get the government we deserve. If we don't get a strong public option followed up by a good set up for going to single-payer, we can change out the ENTIRE CONGRESS in Six Years. By 2016 we can have an ENTIRELY NEW federal government (except for the judges) and start being represented like our founders intended for us to be represented. When members of congress represent the corporations and special interests instead of us, we just keep sending them back to do more damage. We can turn this around but only if we are willing to enforce consequences. It's up to US, not Obama and this cannot be left to the better instincts of people who have demonstrated they cannot be trusted. It's up to US!
In the meantime, we must flood the offices with emails, with faxes, with phone calls (call the local office for free, just call!), and then fill out the comment forms on their congressional websites. If we don't completely overload them, they will be back to business as usual of selling us out.

Let them know this is it. Let them know we need this. Let them know the insurance companies have done too much damage and that they get NO MORE chances. Let them know they get re-elected on this or not at all. Let them know we need the public option to keep the insurance CARTEL honest (at least a little more honest) and that we want it NOW, to be effective and strong in 2010. It's up to US because we are the voters and we can bring the pressure.

Thursday November 5, 2009, 5:04 pm

From Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers

Dear Friends,

We thank you for your continued devotion to the cause of health care for All Americans. We have worked together for many years to write, promote and campaign for HR676, a single payer, not for profit health care system. Your work, in communities across America, has been instrumental in helping at least ten states create single payer movements, with many more states to come.

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is scheduled to consider a single payer bill. As the two principal co-authors of the Conyers single payer bill, we want to offer a strong note of caution about tomorrow's vote.

The bill presented tomorrow will not be HR676. While we are happy to relinquish authorship of a single payer bill to any member who can do better, we do not want a weak bill brought forward in a hostile climate to unwittingly accomplish what would be interpreted as a defeat for single payer.

Here are the facts: There has been no debate in Congress over HR676. There has not been a single mark-up of the bill. Single payer was "taken off the table" for the entire year by the White House and by congressional leaders. There has been no reasonable period of time to gather support in the Congress for single payer. Many members accepted a "robust public option" as the alternative to single payer and now that has disappeared. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has scored the bill scheduled for a vote tomorrow in a manner which is at odds with many credible assumptions, meaning that it will appear to cost way too much even though we know that true single payer saves money since one of every three dollars in the health care system goes to administrative costs caused by the insurance companies. Is this really the climate in which we want a test vote?

While state single payer movements are already strong, the national single payer movement is still growing. Many progressives in Congress, ourselves included, feel that calling for a vote tomorrow for single payer would be tantamount to driving the movement over a cliff. The thrill of the vote would disappear quickly when the result would be characterized not as a new beginning for single payer but as an end. Such a result would be seen as proof that Congress need not pay attention to efforts to restore in Conference Committee the right of states to pursue single payer without fear of legal attacks by insurance companies.

We are always grateful for your support. We are now asking you to join us in suggesting to congressional leaders that this is not the right time to call the roll on a stand-alone single payer bill. That time will come. And when it does there will not be any doubt of the outcome. This system of health care injustice will not be able to endure forever. We are pledged to make sure of that.

Sincerely,
Congressmen John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich

Friday November 6, 2009, 11:55 am
Getting Single Payer is far more likely to be in our future. But with out the Public Option it will be almost in possible. The public option is a frist step. and by the way the word public option has take wings of it's on.
http://www.youtube.com/rockthevote

http://www.rockthevote.com/about/

Friday November 6, 2009, 11:57 am

Thank you, Mamabear. I'm happy to see that you realize the future necessity for single payer.

Friday November 6, 2009, 12:56 pm
We have a better chance at single payer WITHOUT the so-called "public option". It is not what everyone keeps thinking it is. Please do the research. The single payer advocates and house Rep.s like Kucinich and conyers and Weiner all say the public option is not what you think it is, it will NOT get us closer to single payer, and is a disaster for single payer. It has been rigged to make people think it is like single payer so that when it is a failure, which it would be intentionally, Congress can say, "See, we tried but it did not work."
Read What role will insurance companies play in the “public option”? from Physicians for a National Health Plan. They are a single payer, Expanded medicare for All, HR 676, advocates.

Friday November 6, 2009, 1:04 pm

Thanks for your wisdom, Jill!

Friday November 6, 2009, 1:30 pm
Congressman Weiner pulled his amendment so it will not be voted on tomorrow or ever. This is a good thing according to Kucinich and Conyers. I trust Kucinich.
WHAT! Did I just say I TRUSTED a politician???/? WOW, what a concept! unfortunately he isn't MY Rep., well my state anyway. Mine is a sleezball.
This is not the right time for a single payer vote..but soon. So no more calls to your Rep.s for this amendment. They will tell us what to do next soon. We need to wait and vote on a stand alone Bill, HR 676.

Saturday November 7, 2009, 6:46 am
I sincerely hope that the right plans for health care will be chooooooosen for the people of the US... this is so important as there are a lot of lives at stake and people who rely on a good service that does not cost an arm and a leg...

Saturday November 7, 2009, 7:32 am
If only Fox audiences and the anti-healthcare reform crowds could find out about this!! --

For Glenn Beck, Largest US Union -SEIU- Is 'Radical, Marxist,' Except When Its Nurses Treat Him for Emergency Abdominal Pains
Hospitalized Beck tweets in praise of "AMAZING drs/nurses" who've cared for him since 11/4 emergency removal of inflamed appendix. Has it occurred to him to link kind, efficient nurses to dastardly SEIU he's been busy smearing wi his usual verbal feces?

Excerpt:
For the past several months, on radio and television, Beck has cast the SEIU, the country's largest union, as a Toxic Avenger-looking bogeyman in his conspiratorial fantasyland. In the progressive plot of Beck's imagination, the "radical, Marxist" SEIU is conspiring with ACORN "thugs" to destroy the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and turn this country into North Korea--or worse.

Just hours before his hospitalization, Beck was at work increasing the pitch of his attacks on SEIU and its leaders. On Monday, he warned his Fox News audience that SEIU president Andy Stern is "controlling our country." On Wednesday, he claimed Stern was spouting "communist, Marxist propaganda" by addressing the need for labor to organize globally in a global economy.

It is obvious listening to Beck go after the SEIU that he has only recently encountered the name Andy Stern. Almost certainly the introduction came in the form of talking points spoon-fed to Beck by his friends at the corporate-funded policy shop, Americans for Prosperity..

He clearly has little to no understanding of what unions do, their central role in creating the American middle-class, or why the labor movement has long served a legitimate and important role in national politics.

While he's lying on his back, Beck should take advantage of his illness to begin his self-education. He might ask his "amazing" nurses what they think about their wages and benefits, which are some of the best in the country. He should ask them to talk about the relationship between those wages and their yellow and purple union cards. He might learn that they enjoy some of the highest standards for healthcare jobs in the country, not because of the "free market," but because generations of 1199 members fought for them.

The quality of care Beck is receiving is directly connected to the proud history of New York's Local 1199. To pick just one study out of many, research by the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows that heart attack victims sent to unionized hospitals enjoy higher survival rates over those sent to non-unionized hospitals by between seven and 11 percent.

If Beck wants to put his healthcare where his mouth is, he should demand to be taken to a non-SEIU hospital on the future morning when the inevitable cardiac arrest interrupts The Glenn Beck Program and puts its smug, unsuspecting host in the back of ambulance once again.