Join Organizing for America -- and help make sure the change we voted for becomes a reality. This training is designed for volunteers who want to be effective organizers in their neighborhoods and communities.This is a unique opportunity to apply the skills we learned during the campaign to the critical fight for health insurance reform and other upcoming policy initiatives. Join OFA-MA staff and volunteers from across the state to learn how to make change in your own neighborhood and beyond, utilizing the same tools that helped bring President Obama to the White House.Topics include: Working as a community organizer · Storytelling as an organizing tool · Creating and working in organizing teams · Campaign structure and strategy · Issue advocacy for health insurance reform · Using social media for organizing · Phonebanking and Canvassing · Event planning
OFA Volunteer Training in Northampton, Sunday, December 6th: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpc8km
Hello everyone,
I am a 27 year old that has just found out I have MS. That is why I've been trying to get involved with healthcare reform. I've donated the little extra money I have, I have signed petitions, I have called my senators (many times) and I have written and called the Whitehouse many times but I feel like we are just spinning our wheels. As opponents to healthcare reform step up their lies and attacks I think that we need to step up our responses. I am NOT talking about violence. I am talking about dramatic peaceful protest ones that will make an impact and stick in peoples minds. Ones that bring the true cost of our current healthcare system back to the for-front. I think we need to redirect the media attention to WHY we need this reform. Lets show them why, remind the visually why we need this and who will suffer if we fail.
I belong to an email list and we have been passing ideas around and would like to get a few of these ideas started but alas we don't know where to start. I'm writing to everyone I can think of to see if anyone can get these going. Here are the ideas. First, one suggestion was made to hold a welcoming committee for congress on the congress steps. This welcome would consist of sick people that NEED this healthcare reform. Let introduce the congress to the sick people their decisions will affect. Lets give them faces to remember when they vote and negotiate on our lives. Again let me reiterate that this would be a dramatic yet PEACEFUL protest. Another idea is to ask people to send in pics and stories of health insurance companies murder victims (people who have died do to corrupt health insurance companies practices) and we put them on billboards. We also collect them and put them in a book with the birth and death years on the bottom of the pics and send the books to all the members of congress. We could also have protests were every person has a sign with a different persons pic and we march. Just imagine seeing thousands of people marching with pictures, each one different, and knowing that each person marching is also a victim who no longer has a voice. Imagine receiving a book of faces and knowing that they died because of greed. Lets remind the country what this movement is about. Lets make sure that the dead are not forgotten. Lets speak up for those who can no longer speak. Please if anyone can help us get this going let me know.
Thanks for your time.
Emily Votaw
Posted by Dr. Larry Weiss, Health Care Op Ed Committee chair for Alaska:
http://community.adn.com/adn/node/133805
This was sent to me by a friend, and I reprint it here because I think he has something important and from the heart to say:
As a decorated combat veteran of Vietnam with a service connected disability, I am deeply concerned about the availability of health care for both current and future veterans of our country. I also receive some of my health care at my local Veteran’s Administration Hospital where I volunteer. Unfortunately, the funding necessary to support veterans is still too low. This is the direct result of the unwillingness of the Bush Administration and consistently supported by Sen. John McCain, who has failed to support the necessary increases in veteran’s health care. As a result, we will not have the funds necessary to meet our existing needs let along those of the future if John McCain is elected President.
In his health care plan, Senator Barack Obama would put more funding into health care and make the system more stable and predictable for large and small companies and their employees. In contrast, Sen. McCain would squeeze money out of health care to fund other initiatives and his proposal to shift health insurance purchasing to the individual and away from the company would destabilize the health system and remove companies' direct financial incentives for keeping their employees healthy with preventive services.
Despite Sen. McCain’s exemplary service record and his campaign focus on his experiences as a veteran, he has a long history of voting against any increases in health care funding for veterans starting as early as August 2001 when he voted against an amendment that would have provided $650,000,000 additional funding for veterans health care. This was followed by votes in March 2004, March 2006, April 2006 and May 2007 where he was consistently against any increases in health care funding for veterans.
Senator Obama, on the other hand, believes that every American has the right to health care coverage and has a plan to dramatically redesign our health system across the board to reduce waste, improve efficiency and quality which will drive down cost for families and individuals. Veterans, like all Americans, know that health care costs too much and is not available to everyone who needs it. There are not enough providers, hospital beds and outpatient treatment facilities to treat current veterans let alone those who will be returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Senator Obama has consistently supported any funding requests for health care for veterans.
Barack Obama’s health plan will modernize the U.S. health care system to contain spiraling health care costs and improve the quality and access to patient care while promoting prevention and public health. The benefits of an Obama health plan will support all veteran’s and Americans.
Rick Shoup, Concord, Massachusetts
Yesterday, the CIGNA headquarters in Philadelphia was invaded by protestors led by the California Nurses Association. This sort of militant action against the most vicious industry in the United States is still rare in America, but it would become the norm, if John McCain was berthed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
If God forbid, John McCain were able to steal this election (no way on earth he could be elected fair and square), Americans would be forced to take extraordinary actions against the predatory and criminal health insurance industry. Americans would be forced to routinely invade the predatory corporate offices because:
John McCain + THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY = MURDER BY SPREADSHEET
McCain's "reform" of the American health care system would provide big tax incentives for the crippled system to transition from being employer-based to one built on an even worse system of individual responsibility. This is Republican-speak for shift the costs onto your shoulders and mine. He would do this by eliminating the longtime personal tax exemption on employer-provided health insurance and replacing it with a $2,500 individual, and $5,000 family, tax credit for those who have health insurance.
Six days before the most important election in my lifetime, it was an auspicious moment to be standing in the lobby of this Murder by Spreadsheet factory..........
Read the bone-chilling tale at
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/30/866/11503/227/643528
Posted on BlueHamphire Blog, 10/28/08 http://www.bluehampshire.com/frontPage.do
Printed in October2008 Senior Voice, Anchorage, Alaska
(AP) An ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy is trying to lay the groundwork for a breakthrough on health care reform next year, though many believe the enormous undertaking has been made even more difficult by the troubled economy. Kennedy, aides say, has held several video conferences with lawmakers and staff in recent months as he fights from home to overcome brain cancer. His staff has held more than a dozen meetings in recent weeks with various advocacy and interest groups that will help influence the debate. "We're carrying it out in his absence, but this is his doing," said an aide who was not identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "He's in constant touch with leaders in this effort. This is Senator Kennedy at the helm." The story was first reported by The Washington Times. Kennedy doesn't want to repeat the steps that some say doomed health care reform under former President Clinton. That means acting quickly when Congress returns to Washington after the election and the holidays. "There were at least two major factors in the failure of the '93 effort," the aide said. "One was jurisdictional fracturing within the Congress and the other was the time after the inauguration to get a proposal together. Senator Kennedy's analysis is that we need to avoid both of those features." Kennedy is chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Sen. Barack Obama's health care plan will be the starting point in Kennedy's efforts. That's a big assumption given that the presidential race is far from over. The Obama plan features many changes that Massachusetts enacted in 2006, such as greater use of government subsidies to help people afford coverage. However, Obama would not require adults to buy health insurance, as Massachusetts did. Obama does have a requirement that children be insured. Aides would not say where there has been agreement and disagreement among the various interest groups participating in the meetings. Health care changes under both presidential candidates would be expensive, and the federal government is expected to generate an enormous deficit next year even without incorporating those changes. However, Obama is not letting economic woes deter him. "It's not a question of arithmetic or accounting, it's a question of priorities," an aide said. "When AIG needs the money, somehow the money is found. When Freddie and Fannie need it, somehow the money is found. The theory is they're too big to fail. It can certainly be argued that the health care system is too big to fail, but it's failing for millions of people every day." Kennedy, 76, underwent a risky, 3½-hour surgery in June to remove as much of a tumor as possible. He has been steadily increasing his public activity since undergoing six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
From www.cbsnews.com
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/24/health/main4543666.shtml?tag=lowerContent;homeSectionBlock204
© MMVIII The Associated Press.
Op-Ed Columnist McCain’s Radical Agenda - Health Care
By BOB HERBERT Published: September 15, 2008
Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?
These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.
A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.
There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”
For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.
“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs.
According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.”
The net effect of the plan, the study said, “almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care.”
Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to receive employer-paid health benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each month and find that additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits.
While there might be less money in the paycheck, that would not be anything to worry about, according to Senator McCain. That’s because the government would be offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit — $2,500 for a single worker and $5,000 per family — to be used “to help pay for your health care.”
You may think this is a good move or a bad one — but it’s a monumental change in the way health coverage would be provided to scores of millions of Americans. Why not more attention?
The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)
Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It’s the beginning of the end.
When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many) will opt out of the employer-based plans — either to buy cheaper insurance on their own or to go without coverage.
That will leave employers with a pool of older, less healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily be more expensive, which will encourage more and more employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage at all.
The upshot is that many more Americans — millions more — will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As Senator McCain has said: “I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health care system to the patients themselves.”
Yet another radical element of McCain’s plan is his proposal to undermine state health insurance regulations by allowing consumers to buy insurance from sellers anywhere in the country. So a requirement in one state that insurers cover, for example, vaccinations, or annual physicals, or breast examinations, would essentially be meaningless.
In a refrain we’ve heard many times in recent years, Mr. McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of these “needless and costly” insurance regulations.
This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.
You would think that with some of the most venerable houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right before our eyes, we’d be a little wary about spreading this toxic formula even further into the health care system.
But we’re not even paying much attention.
Full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16herbert.html?em
@ 2008 The New York Times Company
(A version of this article appeared in print on September 16, 2008, on page A29 of the New York edition.)
McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate reeks of desperation. For him to pick a unknown to be a heartbeat away from the presidency after meeting with her only once borders on impeachable irresponsibility. Most people would take more care than that in hiring a babysitter!
This move raises serious questions about McCain’s judgment. I hope Obama’s campaign continues to hound McCain for this insanity.
One of the most important reasons...I am confident that he will live up to this Iroquois Indian saying...
"In all of your official acts, self-interest shall be cast aside. You shall look and listen to the welfare of the whole world and have always in view, not only the present but the coming generations--the unborn of the future nation."
Patrick Frank
patrickgfrank@yahoo.com
(843) 372-8851
I think that interstate communication is a good idea...
I urge Maine folks to write letters to the editor. Try USA Today. I had three published during the primaries. And write your own opeds. I had two published in regional papers (in the South, I am from SC). I have special feeling for Maine, since I lived in NE 20 years, and my step-daughter graduated from maine College of Art. To write a letter to USA Today, use this email... letters at usatoday dot com Patrick Frank patrickgfrank@yahoo.com (843) 372-8851
and respond to it. Report it to watchdog at barackobama dot com and respond to the media outlet with an email, through their website. And write a letter to the editor about it. Or an oped about the whole issue of media bias and character assassination.
Patrick (Patrickgfrank@yahoo.com)
Here's the link to the Boston Globe article
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/07/20/obamas_paid_staff_dwarfing_mccains/
What are your thoughts about this campaign strategy?
