Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer on June 25, 2009 5:28 PM
There’s a particular breed of lawmaker on Capitol Hill that is pushing hard against a public health care plan, much to the delight of two seriously moneyed special interest groups–insurers and pharmaceuticals. They’re the Blue Dogs: moderate, vocal and funded in part by the industries trying to protect their bottom line.
The typical member* of the Blue Dog caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives has received $10,300 more from insurers than the typical non-Blue Dog Democrat in the House (including health and accident insurers, HMOs and other health services) and only $3,625 less than the typical House Republican. Earlier this month, the Blue Dogs sent a letter to House leadership arguing that a public option should be created “only if insurance market reforms and increased competition don’t lower costs on their own,” according to the Politico.
About 25 people gathered at the Center Township Volunteer Fire Dept in Beaver County on the evening of July 16, sat down in a circle of folding chairs, and got involved in a new initiative from the Obama administration, a ‘listening tour’ to hear out local activists on current political battles.
The event was pulled together by the new nationwide project of the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America (OFA), and local Democratic Party leaders. Peter Lesser, OFA Field Organizer for Western PA, and former Obama campaign organizer in Chester, PA, led the session. He was introduced by Rocco Giammaria from the Center Township Democratic Committee, and leader of the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania. Dr. Mike Sisk, Beaver County Democratic Chairman, and Tony Amadio, Chairman of the Beaver County Commissioners also participated in the meeting.
If the meeting’s aim was to get a cross section of the hopes and frustrations of local Obama campaign activists, the organizers got what they wanted, and then some. Continue reading County Grassroots Speaks to TeamObama→
No time today for a lengthy analysis of the Tri-Committee health bill. My quick-and-dirty take is this.Those who think the bill is a wonderful progressive victory with a robust public option are wrong, and, on the flip side, the charge that it’s a “bailout for the insurance industry” is totally divorced from what the bill would actually do if passed.
It is the most progressive, comprehensive and significant health care legislation to come down the pike since Medicare was passed in 1965. If it were enacted as written, it’d go a long way to solving a lot of our problems (but by no means all) and wouldn’t break the bank in the process. (I’ll have more next week on the good, the bad and the ugly in the new bill.)
But it also fails some of the basic criteria that most progressives have long said is a red-line that can’t be crossed. First and foremost, it doesn’t have a public option that can compete with private insurers and result in significant cost savings.
It has a public plan in which — as far as the statute goes (it can be expanded in 2015 but there’s no mandate to do so) — only 9-10 million people will be eligible to enroll by 2019. Similarly, the publicly-administered exchanges are projected to cover about 30 million by that year. (These relatively small insurance pools will be able to bargain in concert with Medicare to some degree, so their power will be magnified, but still…)
House Committee Allows States to Create Single-Payer Healthcare
By David Swanson
July 17, 2009
Kucinich amendment receives bi-partisan support
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a victory for single-payer advocates. Our job in the ensuing weeks will be to ensure that this amendment does not get stripped from the final legislation.]
On Friday morning at 9:45 a.m. ET in the House Committee on Education and Labor, the committee members voted 25 to 19 to pass Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s amendment to the healthcare reform bill. This amendment, if it survives the full House, the Senate, the conference, and the President, will not alter the federal legislation except to allow states to create single-payer healthcare systems if they choose to. If this change to the bill makes news, it will pass the Senate, because there is no legitimate argument against it, and the support for it is bipartisan.
Labor Delegation Persuades Cong. John Murtha To Co-Sponsor HR 676
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. After meeting with western Pennsylvania labor leaders on June 29, Representative John Murtha agreed to sign on as a co-sponsor of HR 676, national single payer health care legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). Eighty-five House members, in addition to Conyers, now have their names on HR 676.
Murtha, who has represented Pennsylvania’s 12th CD since 1974, is the eighth most senior member of the House of Representatives, and chairs the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. He joins PA 14th CD Congressman Mike Doyle as the second co-sponsor of HR 676 from western Pennsylvania.
Those who met with Murtha came from the Greater Westmoreland County Labor Council in Greensburg and the Johnstown Regional Central Labor Council. The group included Ed Grystar, Harriet Ellenberger and Rosemary Trump, all Executive Board members of the Westmoreland Council, and Terry Havener of the Johnstown Council. Also in the delegation was Father Bernard Survil, a Catholic priest active in labor affairs.
Ed Grystar said, after learning that Murtha has signed on as a co-sponsor, “The fact that Murtha, from a relatively conservative middle of the road district, signed on as a co-sponsor signifies that the grass roots movement for single payer is growing and opportunities exist to get others from similar districts to sign on.”
In addition to Murtha, Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) also signed on to HR 676 on July 9. Weiner is a member of the Energy & Commerce Committee which is one of three committees writing the House bill.
Click on the link below to view a very informative video about the American and Canadian healthcare systems by an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America – CWA
It’s no secret that the union movement is divided on health care reform. Resolutions favoring “Medicare for All,” a single-payer system, have been passed by 558 unions, central labor councils, state federations, and other union organizations. Yet in practice leaders of many of those same unions have acted as if actual single-payer legislation (Representative John Conyer’s HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders’ S703) didn’t exist.
Instead they’ve promoted milder changes that will leave private insurance companies in place, instead of kicking them out of the temple, as every other industrialized country-from Canada to Japan-has done. In effect, labor’s leaders are placing on the table first what logically should be their fall-back position. They’ve gone along with the D.C. consensus that the most that can be won is a plan that includes a “public option” to compete in the marketplace with private companies.
And they’re not wrong about the unwillingness of this Congress to buck the system. Conyers was asked in May, “What would it take this Congress to pass single payer?” He replied, “Nuclear weaponry.”
Even so, the staunchest single-payer advocates believe they will win most by continuing to agitate for what they really want rather than a compromise. These folks see large amounts of activists’ anger and energy wasted.
RALLY FOR?
The June 25 rally at the Capitol sponsored by the AFL-CIO and Health Care for America Now (HCAN), both of which steer clear of single payer, was attended by 7,000 people. But the organizers “didn’t know what to get them fired up about,” said Mark Dudzic of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. “It was a good, high-spirited group of people, who want to fight, who honestly believe they’re fighting for national health care,” he said. “A lot of the focus of the rally was to mobilize anger at private insurance companies, and it’s tragic where the leaders want to leave those folks.”
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 