Just finished the meeting about public option healthcare with Dr. Dean online. I am an advocate for single payer healthcare. The public option is the best health reform that could get passed this year. The public option would allow people to choose between a single payer plan, and a private insurance plan. 73% of Americans support the public plan, including 79% of independents, and 60% of Republicans! This would be a huge political winner for the democrats and would lead to the democrats picking up many more seats in 2010. Anyway tomorrow there will be a healthcare hearing before the senate finance committee, and you can send in comments in favor of the public option here which will be on the record and read before the committee. Everyone should click the link and remember to demand public option AND significant cost reductions in your comment.
If you are from one of these states please email and call your senators since they are on one of the two committees which will be responsible for crafting healthcare reform legislation this year.
Finance Committee
Montana-Max Baucus, this is critical since he is the chairman of the Finance committee and hasn't supported the public option yet. Your voices need to be heard on this.
North Dakota-Kent Conrad
New Mexico- Jeff BingamanJeff Bingaman is another critical player since he sits on both relevant committees
Massachusetts-John Kerry
Arkansas-Blanche Lincoln
Oregon-Ron Wyden
Washington-Maria Cantwell
Florida-Bill Nelson
New Jersey-Bob Menendez
Delaware- Tom Carper
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Connecticut-Chris Dodd
Maryland- Barbara Mikulski
New Mexico- Jeff BingamanJeff Bingaman is another critical player since he sits on both relevant committees
Washington- Patty Murray
Ohio- Sherrod Brown
North Carolina-Kay Hagan
Please contact your senators, your country is counting on you. Like I said before this will be a big political winner for the democrats because it's popular, it will put thousands of $ back into the American consumers pocket giving them more money to spend which will help the economy recover and result in more jobs. It will also help stop the bleeding of American jobs by making us more competitive with countries who have single payer systems. This also will help move the country in a more progressive direction since it will make people realize, that although the private sector may work better for some things, the government works better for other things. Public health option is like giving millions of Americans a tax cut because of the reduced amount of money they will spend on healthcare, and it will help the 47 million Americans without insurance get adequate healthcare. Any way you slice it, public option healthcare is win win, and it must be passed if we want to sustain a democratic majority.
After all remember what we got after Clinton failed on health reform. Speaker Gingrich and a republican congress. Don't let it happen again, call and email your senators in support of a public healthcare option.