Tell Congress: Support a healthcare public option
| By Alan Franklin - Jun 25th, 2009 at 4:24 pm EDT |
Nearly $1.4 Million dollars PER DAY. That's what the health industry lobby is spending in Washington right now to defeat healthcare reform.1Let's fight their money with our voices and get real healthcare reform.
Those of us who have insurance are seeing our premiums go up at twice the rate of wages,2 higher and higher deductibles, and shocking tactics by insurers to avoid paying claims. More and more employers are dropping insurance altogether because they just can't afford it any longer, adding to the ranks of more than 47 million Americans who have no insurance.3
That's why polls show the vast majority of Americans support healthcare reform that includes a "public option" - public health insurance that would compete fairly with private insurance companies and offer consumers greater choice, expand coverage to more Americans, and ultimately lower healthcare costs.4
So why are there so many news reports that a public option is in trouble? You think maybe that has something to do with the millions of dollars that Big Insurance is throwing around in Washington?5
Congress and the President are seriously focused on healthcare reform for the first time in over fifteen years. We can't afford to let Big Insurance defeat healthcare reform again. Please support the public option:
http://www.ProgressNowColorado.org/publicoption
We'll hand deliver this petition to every member of Colorado's Congressional delegation - both senators and all seven of our representatives - on July 13th at their offices in Washington.
Bills are already moving through committees in the House and Senate. Whether or not a public option remains on the table will be decided in the next couple of weeks. Please take action now:
http://www.ProgressNowColorado.org/publicoption
Thanks for speaking out.
1 Legislating Under the Influence, Common Cause, June 24, 2009.
2 The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey. September 2008.
3 The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
4 Building on Success: The Role of Public Coverage Programs in Health Reform, Center for American Progress.
5 Legislating Under the Influence, Common Cause, June 24, 2009. In addition to lobbying expenditures, the health industry has spent about $373 Million on campaign contributions to members of Congress since 2000.
Comments are closed for this post.
By my calculations, the $373 million works out to $87,149 for each of the 535 in congress every year since the year 2000.
However the financial sector made a whopping donation of $322,000 per congressman, per year. Adding the two together would conceivably be enough to get one elected to Congress. About $800,000 for a Congressman and $2.4 million for a Senator. We the people my ass.
"The report, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," shows that, from 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made $1.725 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation. Nearly 3,000 officially registered federal lobbyists worked for the industry in 2007 alone."
Link
Conyers should (must?) send HR 676 to CBO for scoring! That he, and no one else, are doing so could meant that they KNOW it will show that Single Payer will offer MASSIVE savings over plans involving insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Single Payer.