A majority of polls have shown that Americans, time after time, favor a strong Medicare-like public option that is immediately available, can deliver quality health care with affordable premiums, and help keep the private insurers honest by being available everywhere on day one as a competitive player. Even a third of Republicans polled in these surveys favor the public option--that's an incredibly strong bipartisan indictment that private insurance has failed drastically through its own greed in bilking Americans through expensive premiums, denying them needed care, and paying billions of dollars to insurance company executives on the backs of sick and underinsured Americans.
If private insurers weren't so consumed with greed, they wouldn't be in the place now where they have to face the threat of a public option as envisioned in the Tri-Committee House draft bill to keep them honest. They're where they are today because they placed profits over the lives of Americans. Think of the claims they've denied over the years to Americans with high blood pressure, cancer, pregnancy, and other diseases. They call them "recission" policies, which is a very fancy way of denying medical care by pulling insurance policies from the sick and the injured.
These private insurance companies also have what are known as regional monopolies where they take up a huge portion of the market as much as 94% of the market, thus offering you or your employer very few choices in finding affordable health plans. They're fighting hard against the public option because they know it has the potential to break up their regional monopolies. They're busy on Capitol Hill making sure the Senate, Republicans and and some Democrats, say "No, We Can't" to the public option with thousands of dollars funneled straight to their re-election campaign accounts.
We're tired of hearing excuses from Senators Reid and Baucus, and others that they don't have the votes for a strong public option. They just got Al Franken as their 60th Democratic Senator. No more excuses. We can't afford any more excuses from this Senate while insurance premiums go up every year, and more Americans drop their health insurance coverage to keep food on the table and pay the gas and phone bills.
Real lives are at stake while Senators are busy playing the bipartisanship game to scuttlebutt the public option in order to be "fair to the private insurers." They have their priorities wrong. It shouldn't be about being fair to the private insurers, it should be about being fair to those who have been suffering for too long without health insurance due to pre-existing conditions, unaffordable insurance premiums, and junk insurance policies with few benefits. It's time to be fair to us for a change.
Right now, the insurance industry would love nothing more than Senator Baucus's bill to pass out of the conference committee without a strong public option, and only with a state-based co-op plan with very little bargaining clout. It'd be a mandated bailout for them with us being forced to buy their junk insurance plans. That's their dream and the worst nightmare possible for us. Senators like Baucus, Conrad, Landrieu, Wyden, Lincoln, Cantwell, and others need to drop their "bipartisan" fetish and start thinking about us for a change, instead of the private insurers. They need to stop saying, "No, We Can't," and say, "Yes, We Can," instead to the public option.
As Scarecrow over at Firedoglake points out, the Senate HELP Committee has hobbled the public option. The public option in the Tri-Committee House version is much stronger and has the bargaining clout through the use of payments being tied to Medicare rates. It's time for us to CALL all of the Senators on the HELP Committee! And to CRACK the whip for the public option as well!
CALL the phone numbers of ALL the Senators on the HELP Committee with these talking points below:
Tell Senator [Name] that you DO NOT want the 7-year trigger for the public option and take it off the table, and that you want him to support an affordable strong, robust Medicare-like public option. We NEED a strong, robust Medicare-like public option NOW OPEN TO ALL AMERICANS AND AFFORDABLE, not more of the SAME broken system that's given us unaffordable premiums, little private insurance coverage, and rising co-pays. Also, DON'T TAX OUR EMPLOYER HEALTH BENEFITS. Instead, follow the proposal by President Obama to tax the wealthy above $250,000, eliminate the overpayments in Medicare Advantage, and put tax capital gains to help fund health care reform. TELL YOUR SENATOR NO ON THE SCHUMER COMPROMISE AND NO ON THE CONRAD CO-OP COMPROMISE.
These are the members of the HELP Committee to CALL today:
Tom Harkin (IA): (202) 224-3254
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD): (202) 224-4654
Jeff Bingaman (NM): (202) 224-5521
Patty Murray (WA: (202) 224-2621
Jack Reed (RI): (202) 224-4642
Bernard Sanders (I) (VT): (202) 224-5141
Sherrod Brown (OH): (202) 224-2315
Robert P. Casey, Jr. (PA): (202) 224-6324
Kay Hagan (NC): (202) 224-6342
Jeff Merkley (OR): (202) 224-3753
Then PLEASE CALL the rest of the Democratic Senators to urge them to support a strong, robust Medicare-like public option in health care reform!
Please CALL Senator Max Baucus at (202) 224-2651
Please CALL Senator Olympia Snowe at (202) 224-5344
Please CALL Senator Charles Schumer at 202-224-6542
Please CALL Senator Edward Kennedy at (202) 224-4543
Please CALL Senator John Rockefeller at (202) 224-6472
Please CALL Senator Ron Wyden at (202) 224-5244
Please CALL Senator Kent Conrad at (202) 224-2043
Please CALL Senator Jeff Bingaman at (202) 224-5521
Please CALL Senator John Kerry at (202) 224-2742
Please CALL Senator Blanche Lincoln at 202-224-4843
Please CALL Senator Debbie Stabenow at (202) 224-4822
Please CALL Senator Maria Cantwell at 202-224-3441
Please CALL Senator Bill Nelson at 202-224-5274
Please CALL Senator Robert Menendez at 202-224-4744
Please CALL Senator Thomas Carper at (202) 224-2441
CALL the White House at: 202-456-1111 and E-MAIL them as well!
Also, President Obama is going to hold a live online townhall at 1:15PM ET about health reform, and I've asked you to submit questions to Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter to President Obama yesterday. Let's see what he says in response to our questions.
I just got this diary published over at HuffingtonPost! Please feel free to go there and comment as well!