Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Not just another single-payer post

Murphy of PUMAPAC sent me this email, and I'd like to pass it on to you. This message concerns the drive for single-payer health insurance, and thus demands to be read by everyone, not just those who feel comfortable wearing the PUMA label.
What kind of a democracy are we living in when the ONE group that should be considered the PRIMARY stakeholder in the health care reform debate, the American PEOPLE, is not even allowed a seat at the table?

Poll after poll show that the majority of American citizens favor some sort of single-payer, public option health coverage. Small business owners want it. Families want it. Sick people who have been dropped from their insurance companies’ rolls want it. Grown children who are caring for parents who became ill before they reached the Medicare age want it. MILLIONS and MILLIONS of Americans want real, universal, affordable health coverage.

WHY does this Senate Finance Committee so smugly dismiss our concerns, our interests, and our voices?

Here’s some political realism for you: Because they have been bought and paid for by the for-profit industries that make BILLIONS of DOLLARS a year milking money from American citizens.

Tell Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus that the American people are SICK and TIRED of Pay to Play !

Learn more here, and please contact the Senate Finance Committee today.

http://pumapac.org/2009/05/06/the-pay-for-play-us-senate/

Thank you and Good Luck,

Murphy.
Call Sen. Baucus' office: (202) 224-2651
Send the FAX: (202) 224-9412

Copy and paste these email addresses into the BCC line of your email:

max@baucus.senate.gov, chuck@grassley.senate.gov, prowl@pumapac.org, gretawire@fox.com, Hannity@foxnews.com, cnn@cnn.com, Foxreport@foxnews.com,
Newswatch@foxnews.com, news@nbc24.com, newshour@pbs.org, info@moveon.org, dianne_feinstein@feinstein.senate.gov, senator@boxer.senate.gov, senator@stabenow.senate.gov, rachel@msnbc.com, prowl@pumapac.org

Email and Fax this letter:

To: Senate Finance Committee

NO MORE PAY TO PLAY POLITICS!

Why are there no advocates for Single Payer or Universal Health Care included in your discussions of health care reform?

Could it be that the Finance Committee of the United States Senate is a Pay to Play system just like Rod Blagojevich’s Illinois?

Max Baucus, Chair: $2.7 MILLION dollars in one election cycle
Chuck Grassley, Ranking Republican: $1.8 MILLION dollars in one election cycle
Orrin Hatch: $1 MILLION dollars in one election cycle
Kent Conrad: $800,000 in one election cycle
Blanche Lincoln: $800,000 in one election cycle
Mike Enzi: $800,000 in one election cycle
John Ensign: $700,000 in one election cycle
Jim Bunning: $600,000 in one election cycle
Mike Crapo: $600,000 in one election cycle
Tom Carper: $500,000 in one election cycle
Olympia Snowe: $375,000 in one election cycle

That’s $10.7 MILLION dollars paid DIRECTLY to eleven members of the Senate Finance Committee by the for-profit health care industry in just the last election cycle alone.

No more Pay to Play in the U.S. Senate! Real Health Care Reform NOW!

Sincerely,

Your Name

9 comments:

katiebird said...

Done!

But, it feels a little like spitting in the wind. I'm very discouraged.

Anonymous said...

Since when Murphy "I Voted for McCain" of PUMAPAC care about health care ? She should petition the person she voted for...

Joseph Cannon said...

I thought there would be a clown like you, Anon. A-HEM. A lot of people voted for McCain who never thought they would vote for a Republican, and many of those people now want single-payer.

arbusto205 said...

This is some reading material for you. Not meant to be a comment for this post, I'm too lazy to email. You can choose to publish or not.

Some links for you about some coke jets you know about and our current financial mess:

Red Sea Management / Skyway

http://www.sec.gov/news/digest/2009/dig031809.htm

http://newyork.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel08/nyfo0102308b.htm

http://www.offshorebusiness.com/OAsampleIssue.pdf

Red Sea and Naked Short Selling

http://www.deepcapture.com/the-story-of-deep-capture-by-mark-mitchell/

Bloomberg's background on phantom shares

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4490541725797746038

It looks like most of this is water under the bridge so I don't mind adding that RedSea has some seriously weird British Islamicist links and both coke jets were connected by the same law enforcement folk. DH at MadCow did great work here but hasn't published smoking gun for connecting flights yet.

katiebird said...

Oh! Was voting for Obama considered a vote for Health Care? I had no idea!

You'd think if it was that important to him then he would be giving Sen. Baucus a little more guidance.

MrMike said...

The O-bot defenders of the Immaculate Deception don't know weather to spit or go blind. They try to play the What Would Hillary DO? game.

mwb said...

Anon bleated "She should petition the person she voted for..."

Did I miss a memo that only people who vote for the winner in an election are still citizens with a right to representation and ability address their grievances to elected officials?

Clearly I was woefully misinformed about how this whole Democracy thing works.

Anonymous said...

I support single payer, although perhaps another reform might also yield a good result.

What I don't understand is the difference some evidently see from the Clinton years.

The dreaded 'progs' are supposed to have been wrong when they ignorantly insisted upon single payer back in the Clinton years (a non-starter idea, politically, since it was impossible to get enough support, according to some).

What has changed NOW that makes it any more do-able? I would think the same political calculus is in play.

XI

Anonymous said...

XI:

*Sigh*

Ok, for the benefit of other readers, the "some" who said single-payer wasn't possible in 1993-4 is everyone who was involved in the political process surrounding it at the time (that is, if they cared about it at all).

The differences bewteen now and then? This time it became a real issue in the primaries and campaigns (one sign of this is that Obama cared enough about it to ridicule the very idea of it in speeches to supporters, while at the same saying in his general-public TV ads that he was for it; one of his dominant traits is that he ridicules and lies whenever he thinks it will result in him having more power, just like wingnuts do).

Back then, except for the progs and right-wingers (around 1/3 of the populace) no one cared enough about universal health care to fight for or against it. But after two recessions only 2 1/2 years apart where millions lost their coverage with their jobs and didn't get it back when employed again, years of suffering under HMOs and massive increases in premiums, coupled with a decade of corporate-malfeasance scandals, a supermajority of the public now cares enough to want the sort of health care which doesn't involve the insurance companies, i.e. single-payer. Add to all this a Democratic majority in the House and supermajority in the Senate elected in part on the promise of UHC (it was what, the number three issue?) and this creates an opportunity which wasn't there in in the early 90's.

The progs were wrong in insisting on single-payer to the exclusion of anything else when single-payer wasn't politically possible. Now that it has more than a good chance, they should be stepping up and joining the majority in fighting for it, instead of letting Obama and the Dems completely off the hook.


Sergei Rostov