Please pick up those phones, and start calling every single member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and to tell them to stand firm for a public option! Tell them that they can't allow the Senate to ping-pong its bill to them without going through the conference process, otherwise the progressives will lose their ability to improve on some of the provisions in the conference process.
PLEASE CALL THE CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS NOW!
When you call, please keep to these talking points below:
- Don't allow the Senate to ping-pong its bill by bypassing the entire conference process. It'd deprive Rep. [name] of the ability to make the health insurance reform bill better by improving on provisions in the bill.
- Please stand FIRM on the public option!
- Don't support the Medicare buy-in if it's very limited, based on negotiated rates rather than Medicare rates, not open to all over 55 and up, and doesn't have adequate subsidies. People can't afford to shell out $7600 a year without subsidies until 2014.
There are concerns about the Senate bill going straight to the House for an up and down vote. It also means that if the Senate removes the public option from its legislative package, the House would be asked to accept it, and to pass it straight to the President's desk. It's why the manager's amendment by Senator Reid is so crucial, because if that manager's amendment includes a provision that cuts out the public option in exchange for that toothless FEHBP private insurance exchange and a very limited Medicare buy-in for those 55 and up who are uninsured and are in small businesses, we'd have no real way to lower the premiums of private insurance, or to keep them honest.
Basically progressives in the House would be asked to swallow the so-called compromises on the Senate side if the White House and the Senate Democratic leadership don't want to go through the conference process. And progressives also wouldn't be able to leverage for better changes to the bill such as earlier implementation of reforms, which are more extensive in the House bill than in the Senate, and they wouldn't be able to put in other protections that are far better to consumers in the House bill than are in the Senate bill.
And also, you know who'd be in charge of congressional jurisdiction over the OPM nonprofit private insurance plans exchange? Senator Joe Lieberman. Yep, you read that right. There's a trigger on the public option and apparently if nonprofit private insurers don't offer a nonprofit private plan within the exchange in every state, the public option would be triggered. That's a very weak trigger, and it shouldn't comfort anyone that Senator Lieberman is in charge of jurisdiction for oversight of this private exchange within an exchange program.
The plan emerging from negotiations among moderate and liberal Democrats would put a key part of the planned health insurance exchanges under the supervision of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). And jurisdiction for oversight of OPM falls to the centrist-dominated Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Lieberman chairs.
So far, we have about three progressive Members of the House on the record saying that they wouldn't support the Senate bill without a public option, and if it has a very limited Medicare buy-in:
Rep. Grijalva
Grijalva: What the Senate is doing is effectively emasculating the opportunity to have a public option. It’s up to House members, and it’s up to us to continue to hold the line. I hope that it comes to conference. I hope that we don’t just get a Senate bill that we have to vote up or down. But if that becomes the case, and the scenario I’m seeing now is what comes out of the Senate, then I’m not going to vote for it.
Rep. Cleaver
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) told Stark that his commitment to the public option still stands, and that "we don’t have a health care bill without a public option."
Rep. Ellison
ELLISON: The fact is, politics is not easy, and anything worth having is worth fighting for. And it’s time now, not only for members who have pledged their support for the public option, to have to step forward and still say "I will be counted"... but it’s also time for that teamwork. That teamwork for people inside the progressive movement to... get on the phone, have those rallies, make those calls, to come down here, to talk to the Senate, to say "we insist upon a public option, we will not abide a bill without a public option."
Once again, please pick up those phones and CALL NOW!
PLEASE CALL THE CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS NOW!
When you call, please keep to these talking points below:
- Don't allow the Senate to ping-pong its bill by bypassing the entire conference process. It'd deprive Rep. [name] of the ability to make the health insurance reform bill better by improving on provisions in the bill.
- Please stand FIRM on the public option!
- Don't support the Medicare buy-in if it's very limited, not open to all over 55 and up, and doesn't have adequate subsidies. People can't afford to shell out $7600 a year without subsidies until 2014.
UPDATE:
The Washington Post says that Senator Reid may drop the limited Medicare buy-in from his manager's amendment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Reid was expected to include the new insurance program and the expansion of Medicare eligibility in the "manager's amendment" of last-minute changes to the $848 billion bill that he submitted Wednesday night to the Congressional Budget Office. But Democratic aides said the Medicare provision could still be dropped or altered before the measure advances to the floor.