My own personal healthcare campaign: Pick an expensive hospital bill or denial letter, cross out any personal info, and send it to the wavering Dems and evil Lieberman... Here's the one I sent last night (I added the names for each Senator by taping an extra piece of paper on before each fax). Hope some of you will do the same!!!! Fax #s: Lieberman 202-224-9750, Lincoln 202-228-1371, Nelson 202-228-0012, Bayh 202-224-1377, Landrieu 202-224-9735, Collins 202-224-2693, Conrad 202-224-7776Send a fax every day!!!
I wrote: "Here you go... You pay! Since you take money from the insurance industry and since you have government run insurance and since you don't think I need it, why don't you pay my bills? Don't block the healthcare reform bill unless you plan to pay my bills. Public Option or Bust." Then I circled the amount due, wrote what it was for (an ER visit) and the fact that it was with insurance, and wrote "Please pay! Reform long overdue"
I am so furious with the recent demand by Olympia Snowe that Congress "take the public option off the table." Just who do Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats think they are? Public polling shows overwhelming support for the public option. Why do the minorities: the right wing fringe, the Senate Finance Committee, the Republican politicians still in office, think they have the right to dictate the kind of reform or lack of reform that all Americans receive? Four out of five Congressional committees have created bills with a public option, and the Senate Finance Committee isn't so powerful that they get to determine the direction of reform with their faulty, Group of Six panel. I just cannot stand how much coverage they get in the media and how much importance they're given in this debate. It isn't accurate and it isn't right.
I attended the Bus Tour rally in Denver this Friday, and we had a great 1500-person turnout. I hope that everyoe who attended that event will also attend one of tomorrow night's vigils (there's one in Confluence Park in downtown Denver). Here is a link to some of my pics and videos from Friday's event:
(Just click on the cover picture to open the album!)
http://picasaweb.google.com/ninanina1313
Sometimes all this activism seems to be vanishing into the void, but I was happy to see that one of my comments on the NYT site garnered 439 "recommendations." It was in response to Paul Krugman's article about the seeming lack of trust in the voting base...
Here it is:
I am furious about the lack of party cohesion behind the agenda which WE ELECTED Democrats to fulfill. I am appalled by the defection of the Blue Dogs. I will be more than willing, come November, to contribute grassroots support and money to unseat any Blue Dogs and support their liberal opponents regardless. There will be no more supporting "pseudo" Democrats for the good of the party. It does the party no good.
To address the Blue Dogs directly: What do think you are going to accomplish by acting like Republicans? Do you really think that if the Democrats fail to pass real health reform, people are going to vote for a Democrat who is sort of like a Republican, vs. putting an actual Republican back in office to replace you? The whole point of your existence is to prove to people that there IS a difference between the parties and that Democrats do have more to offer, so stop betraying your own party and slowing down an agenda that is crucial to everyday Americans. All of the Blue Dogs who are “proudly” manipulating health care legislation should be utterly and totally ashamed of themselves.
Amidst all the nonsense being spewed about living wills, people need to understand that they can use a living will to insist doctors DON'T pull the plug and DO take all heroic measures to save their lives. However, many seniors don’t want to be intubated and put through painful tests if they have a terminal illness. My grandmother didn’t. I would have loved to prolong her life and urge her to keep fighting lung cancer when she caught a very deadly form of pneumonia, only because I loved her so much, but SHE decided she’d rather die quickly from pneumonia than slowly from cancer. That was her choice, written in a living will, and expressed to us directly, and we respected it. Most elderly people fear that decisions will be taken OUT of their hands, which is exactly what living wills prevent.
The Republicans have a lot of nerve to talk about "staying out of end-of-life decisions" after the Terry Schiavo debacle. By removing living will provisions from healthcare reform we simply deprive people of the chance to talk with a knowledgeable professional about THEIR WISHES at the end of life.
