Tweet
When this blog was still Oxdown, I wouldn’t have given a second thought to publishing this post. Now that it’s The Seminal, I have given it a second thought and have decided to publish it anyway.
Offered without comment, recommended talk points from a form-letter page on the HCAN web site entitled, "Thank the Senate Finance Committee for Getting to Work." Our friend can tell us for sure, but I believe the "Wednesday 10:00 am hearing" refers to the February 25, 2009, session with the CBO director discussed here.
I do not believe one can navigate to this page from within the HCAN web site any longer.
Write your letter to the Senate Finance Committee below thanking them for getting to work so quickly.
Feel free to use the talking points provided [below] to help construct your letter.
The Senate Finance Committee will meet on Wednesday at 10:00 am for its first health care reform hearing of the year. This shows just how serious Chairman Max Baucus is about leading the reform effort.
Let’s show the Senate Finance Committee and Chairman Max Baucus that you appreciate their leadership in making health care reform their top priority in 2009!
Some talking points you can use to craft your message:
* We’re at an unprecedented moment in history where it is both necessary and possible to achieve comprehensive health care reform. The work begins today.
* Thank you for the leadership being shown by the Senate Finance Committee in recognizing this opportunity and moving forward on health care reform.
* I support Chairman Baucus, the Committee, and all of your Congressional colleagues who will fight for reform that guarantees quality, affordable health coverage for everyone in America, including a standard, comprehensive benefit package and the choice of a public health insurance plan that will always be there when I need it.
* To be affordable to families, businesses and government, we know we need to slow the growth in health care costs, but doing so requires up-front investments in information systems, health care providers, and comprehensive coverage.
Most of all, thank them for working so quickly! [emphasis in original]
9 Comments
Nice. Great moments in serendipity indeed!
Yep, that was one of our old actions on the Finance Committee, you’ve got the date right. Of course, all that positive pressure didn’t help nearly as much with Finance as it did with the other committees.
Thanks for the confirmation, JR.
You can’t influence Congress with a little sugar when they get it by the ton from lobbyists. I would like to know if HCAN had actually met with Baucus in advance of this. If they had they might have guessed he was going to be a complete wanker on this. With the public option becoming more nebulous and insubstantial by the day, the decision to pre-emptively ditch single payer is getting harder and harder to justify.
Hugh, Kip Sullivan published a must-read article earlier this week on the bait-and-switch between the public option as originally conceived by Jacob Hacker, which would enroll an estimated 130 million Americans, and the weak (I mean homeopathy-weak!) tea we’re being asked to swallow now. The disconnect between the legitimate passions of public option advocates and the ineffectuality of what they’re now pushing is bordering on the pathological.
We haven’t met with Baucus in a while. He’s not our biggest fan.
Thanks for this reply and for the reference to Kip Sullivan’s article. I’ll refer to it in a post I have planned for much later tonight on Disingenuousness and the Public Option.
Looking forward to that!
John Edwards early on embraced the original Hacker plan and months later Hilary jumped on board, but Obama dragged his feet. I am so pissed that John Edwards (I campaigned for him in Iowa in 2004 and 2008)screwed up by letting the powers that be have something on him– because right now we need a strong voice who completely understands the problem and the plans and also makes the connection between corporate rule and getting any thing done. He told people not to give these folks a seat at the table because they will only leave you crumbs. He also said he would target the congress critters who were opposed to a true Medicare type public plan and go right to their districts and talk to the people to push this thing through.
So yes, now they baited people who drank this kool aid and now have put in its place a crappy plan that won’t even go into effect until 3 1/2 to 10 years. Meanwhile more people will die. More people will go broke. But do you really think these people in D.C. care? Aren’t there too many poor people anyway? Aren’t those annoying boomers going to just gum up the whole system anyway? And besides it’s not Congress or the president’s fault, it’s our fault..personal responsibility, don’t you know. So Max is having a health summit.