It's been a wacky few weeks here on As HCR Turns. The Senate made the bold move to actually...discuss their reform bill! I do believe they could lose a race with drying paint.
As I'm sure you could not have missed, this important step has brought us only more uncertainty about the fate of the public option. New doubts have emerged about the possibility of using reconciliation. Some pundits even question if the public option, as watered down as it appears it will be, is worth fighting for in the Senate bill. The $64,000 question being is it worth derailing the rest of the bill if there is no public option.
I won't even attempt to answer that one. But I do know that we can't give up on the public option yet. So, to the action down there...
Yes, Congress is on vacation this week, but that doesn't mean we get to be. We should still call their home offices. We should protest outside said offices. We should fax the crap out of their D.C. offices so that they return to a mountain of paper all over the office.
And we should so be writing letters to the editor. Letters to the editor are a great way to both garner attention for an issue (for those of you whose Senators are doing the right thing) and to influence people (for those of you with intransigent prats for Senators). The ultimate goal with LTEs here is to influence the readers to also call their Senators. Obviously, LTEs in states like, oh say...Arkansas are critically important right now. The Dem problem children really need to be given what for and to hear it from all quarters. But the rest of us can still send in LTEs in vociferous support of a real public option, not one designed to fail with triggers and God knows what else.
And we do need to - we've read all the articles about the increased efforts at courting conservaweenies in the Senate and we need to do everything we can to influence that. The first tack is to hold the line on triggers. They are watering, watering, wtering the public option down as it is; a trigger mechanism is just insulting.
But given the writing on the wall, adding triggers or stripping the public option entirely seems more and more likely. Sherrod Brown and others are doing their best to hold the line, but the narcissism of Snowe, Lieberman et al truly knows no bounds. We've also got champions in Burris and Feingold. Please show these people the love until it hurts both of you.
As for the rest, especially Reid, it's time to really get into the game. By that, I mean, if Harry is determined to mollify the Senate reprobates by sacrificing the public option, there had better be a damn good price for it and I don't mean their vote.
I'm talking crap like Sec. 2954 of the Senate bill wherein they reinstate funding for abstinence-only programs. True, it's not the budget they used to have, but even $1 is too much to spend on that nonsense, especially when other methods are far more effective at reducing teen pregnancy rates.
So if the conservaweenie assholes don't want the public option, they'll just have to give up the abstinence funding to remove it.
Thankfully, the Christian Scientist cult sect has not yet been successful in their attempts to insert themselves into the Senate bill. These assholes want federal tax dollars to pay for prayer therapy. I am so not joking!
This is health care in the world of Christian Science, where the sick eschew conventional medicine and turn to God for healing. Christian Scientists call it "spiritual health care," and it is a practice they are battling to insert into the health-care legislation being hammered out in Congress.
Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay someone like Lewis for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost.
The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would "ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion."
Say it with me, everybody: Separation of Church and State. These idiots don't even have a leg to stand on here; it's kind of hard to make the case that this wouldn't be government endorsement of religion when "Christian" is a prominent component of your org's name.
As I said, they haven't been successful so far, but we can take no chances here. If that nonsense gets in the bill, things will get ugly as sin in a New York minute. And wtf is Kerry doing even talking to these people, let alone qualifying as an "ally"?
It is said there is no rest for the wicked and so there is also no rest for the rest of us. Man the fax machines and typewriters!
Breaking it all down:
LTEs - if your Senator is behaving, you have the luxury of speaking out forcefully against this abstinence chicanery and the effrontery of prayer therapy. If your senator is not behaving, demand the public option with no triggers and gimmicks. How dare they thwart the will of the American people, etc.
Reid - no triggers, leave the public option as it is. You can have money for abstinence programs when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. If you want prayer therapy, then swear to never see a Doctor again, etc.
Your Good Senators - heap praise on these people. Encourage them to strip the abstinence and keep the religious gobbledygook out of the bill. Implore them to take a bold stand with Burris, Bennett, Brown and Feingold.
Your Bad Senators - same as reid, but be a little more...emphatic is the euphemism I'll use. And throw in reminders of their electoral vulnerability where appropriate - Blanche is toast if she votes wrong on this, all the money pledged for primarying Lieberman, etc. It's not about them, they work for us...yadda yadda.
If there is polling for your state indicating popular support for the public option, use it, use it, use it. That is one of the most powerful cudgels we have in this and it's just heartbreaking to me that we don't have any for Louisiana.
Most importantly, please, please, please spread the word and get as many people involved as you can! These fuckers still work for us and though they may forget that from time to time, we never will.
So let's go!