Letters to newspapers are still an effective way to support an issue. They don’t have to be eloquent and shouldn’t be lengthy. The letters on “our” side of the issue just have to be numerous.

Here’s my idea–

I’d like to see progressive groups working together–MoveOn, blogosphere, etc..

I’d like to see our side organize a Labor Day event–lots of pro-public-plan events in towns and cities across the US. Basically, we need a progressive and truly grass roots equivalent of tea parties, but with huge numbers and no birthers.

I’d also like to see the kind of rallies that greeted Obama when he was campaigning as we crosses the country, barnstorming on this issue.

I’d like to see coordinated lobbying efforts that would connect progressives in an area and help them join with their neighbors to blanket their local congress critters.

Those are my August wishes.

Back in far away early 1970’s while in High School in American History class we were required to read ‘The Jungle’–the book by Upton Sinclair.

Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries this kind of activity such books like ‘The Jungle’ by American newspapers or authors of books was known as muckraking.

Too bad muckraking has fallen so out of fashion here in this early 21st century. Who’s side are such media edifices like the NYTs on here in early 21st century anyway? This mornings NYTs has a Page One article crowing about the “concensus” WashingtonDC is manuring the American people with.

One may wonder if some 60-70 years from now High Schools will have anything like ‘The Jungle’ to put on required student reading lists about how rotten and amoral profits driven American healthcare was in early 21st century?

It surely would be nice if big American media like the New York Times or CNN or Clear Channel radio were exposing current American healthcare shortfall,greed,moral depravity. Throwing light on this American Congress and WH we have going all piggy on money politics and trying to not move on real reform and avoid logical choice of Single Payer Plan completely.

More and more it seems to be coming down to a very real political need to defang and declaw American corportations. To clean out WashingtonDC of this reign of corrupted money politics by taking all bribery out. To go to WashingtonDC with pitchforks and torches and remind the SOBs who why they are there — who they are working for and clear up any misunderstandings about who that is.

This bogus so called “reform” of American healthcare we are seeing here in this year 2009 needs some real muckraking to be sure.

Thanks PW.

I’m not sure how practical these are.

It would be great if we could enlarge the fight. Where are the unions? They’re positioned perfectly to run ads about how the health insurance oligopoly off shores jobs.

Cigna Replacing Chattanooga Workers With L-1s

“Satyam Computer Services is CIGNAs Offshore Information Technology
Service Provider based in India. This offshore information technology
program a strategy widely adopted by industry competitors such as
Aetna, Wellpoint, Humana, AIG, Metlife and Prudential will provide
greater capacity to move new products to market faster, improve cost
efficiencies and strengthen market competitiveness.”

Outsourcing health care may be a thrifty alternative

If you could buy a new hip for $10,000 overseas instead of $32,000 in Milwaukee, would you do it?

If you’re uninsured or underinsured, you’d probably jump at the chance.

If you work for an employer that provides health insurance, but with a consumer-driven plan, you might also be willing to travel to India, Thailand or the Philippines for your elective surgery.

If your employer covered the travel for you and a companion, a four-star hotel, extra days in the country to recuperate and a cash award on top of that, a majority of people would make the trip.

That’s what a recent survey showed: 73% would join the stampede of medical tourists buying their health care where it is much more affordable than in the United States.

Forces of globalization that have reshaped manufacturing and data processing in the U.S. are now being visited upon health care. Given the out-of-control hyperinflation of the last decade, it’s about time. Anything that creates more of a marketplace is welcome and desperately necessary.

Foreign competition will set a new baseline for what medical treatments ought to cost. Accordingly, expect protectionist pressure on politicians from the big health care systems.

There has been a stampede of companies and individuals toward consumer-driven plans that incorporate a high deductible and offsetting personal health account. An estimated 8 million Americans will be covered in these plans by year’s end.

And now there is a corresponding stampede of consumers searching to find better value, even if it’s far away. In 2006, an estimated 500,000 people went abroad for elective procedures, up from 150,000 in 2004. The acceleration in those numbers is just beginning.[…]

OT, everytime the health insurance lobby runs an ad in a district, find out (or guess) how much it cost to make and place. Throw those dollars right back at them in an ad in that district. Piggyback on their advertising to illustrate that the health insurance lobby is just a parasite on the taxpayers and all those in the medical supply chain who really do provide value, hospitals, physicians, nurses, …..

I’m ok on strategy. I’m just a short on tactics and the logistics to make this kind of stuff happen.

Did you know that Democrats on Waxman’s Eneregy & Commerce Committee rejected two measures to create parity between Congress’ Health Coverage and the Public’s?

“Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who spoke at length yesterday about the need to ensure Americans have access to the same quality health coverage that Congress gets, came out against the measure when the Republican trio offered him a chance to put his vote where his mouth was.

“People will say to us, ‘Why can’t we have the same thing you guys have?’” said Gingrey. “We ought to give everybody in this country an opportunity to get this.”

E&C Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) responded that, in his view, opening up the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan to the general public was unacceptable “because it strikes the public plan.” E&C Health Subcommittee Chair Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said the proposal to let the public into Congress’ health plan was based on “a false assumption” that the result “is going to be somehow better” than segregating Congress’ health care from that of the great unwashed.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats voted 31-28 to reject an amendment from Reps. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), and Lee Terry (R-NE) that would have opened up the multiple-plan health coverage options available to Members of Congress to the public at large.

A separate amendment sponsored by Rep. Roy Blunt would have put all members of the committee on the record about the desirability of the Democrats’ “public option” by forcing them to vote for or against the automatic enrollment of all federal elected officials from Congress to the President in that public health coverage plan.

“We’ve been challenged by many constituents that ‘if there’s going to be this government plan, shouldn’t you be a part of it?’ I agree with my constituents that if were going to pass this plan, we ought to put ourselves in it,” said Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE). North Carolina Republican Sue Myrick concurred, saying, “If this is a good plan for them, it ought to be good enough for us.”

In an ultimate CYA cop-out move, Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) argued that the amendment was outside the jurisdiction of the committee because it would affect the benefits of members of Congress. Waxman upheld her with a ruling of the chair, and the amendment was dismissed.

Link please. Where did this come from?

A-yep. Those letters are read by people who vote, too. In fact, writing letters to the hometown papers of Blue Dogs is probably more effective than calling their offices — especially if you’re not a constituent.

Good morning, everyone! I overslept — where’s the coffee? Thanks!

Speaking of traditional media coverage, will there come a time when any FDL front-pager will mention that Speaker Pelosi will give single payer a floor vote?

One of the problems is that our outreach tends to focus on the political junkies. Wellstone Action used to say (may still say) that roughly 10% of the population is interested in/informed about political issues (and sadly, health care has become a political issue). These are the people, by and large, who read LTEs et al.

Something new needs to happen, and fast. And almost all of “new” costs big bucks. Which is always and ever a problem for progressives.

I mentioned yesterday that it might (!) be useful to have Michael Moore speak to this particular issue. Yeah, the right hates him. So what? If he got semi-serious in a series of ads on multiple networks, I suspect that might reach the folks who thrive on the fusion of information and entertainment. “Look, Maude, it’s Michael Moore and he’s not being funny!”

Been picking my own brain (ugh!) about this very matter. We’re missing something. Not overlooking something that’s been done before, but missing something new. Figure out how to make a YouTube piece go viral? Jill and Kevin’s health care? Dunno. Thinking . . . . .

While my representative is home for the August recess I plan on doing a lot of 3-way calling. I tested the method out this week and it goes like this: “Hello my name is …. and I’m working with the Heath Care for America Now campaign promoting a STRONG PUBLIC OPTION for our Congressional delegation to vote for in any health care reform legislation. Do you feel the need for health care reform?” If they say yes I immediately ask them if they have expressed their concern with our District Representative or Senators and if they say, no, I say, “Would you like to right now? I’ll make the call.” I made several attempts this past week and I’d guess my success rate was only 20%, but if I had a list, say of Registered Democratic voters, by success would have been higher.

Sounds like gameplaying by Congressional Republicans who are pissed off about Weiner’s efforts to get them on the record as either backing or opposing Medicare.

See, the deal is that lots of elderly Americans don’t think of Medicare as “evil gummint” and that’s what the Republicans have been using to get them to oppose reform. Weiner’s bill forces the Republicans to go on the record about it — just as Neil Abercrombie’s bill forced them to either disavow or back the birthers.

Well, it just happened, thanks to you, Lambert. Who knew you were so powerful?

After waxing hopeful a few days ago, I’m back to trying my best to ignore this “debate.”

Why? Because every so-called compromise is just accommodating the established order, i.e. protecting the insurance companies. There’s no way they can paper this over. What will inevitably result from having a corrupt Congress cobble together this legislation is a hideous, expensive mess. They will call it “reform” and there will be a few good changes, but it won’t be universal care, it will strengthen the insurance companies, and in the end, nothing will actually be fixed. It simply sickens me to even read about the process, because the lying and corruption is so out in the open. To hell with all of them, even the “progressives,” who have been criminally silent throughout.

We have a clearly dysfunctional government, when it comes to working for the people who elected it. A true public option that would be cheap, effective, and universal has never even been on the table, much less publicized and promoted.

Best of luck to all, however. One shouldn’t discount the possibility of the miraculous.

CWA is definitely part of the fight: http://www.wdtv.com/news/local/52132722.html

“GOP/Media Complex” perfect description! living here in oregon, my two senators and wonderful representative, peter defazio, are already in favor of health care reform with a public option.

writing to those senators and blue tics, when i am not from their state and can not vote yea or nay on them, is ineffectual. commenting on blogs such as msnbc’s “firt read” may or may not get published. letters-to-the-editor, in my conservative small town, is all i have left, and this i have done.

word must be told loudly and clearly, a public option is no more than a non-profit, government funded healthcare option just as medicare and the VA.

seniors must be reassured, health care reform is not senior euthanasia and not some grand government conspiracy to kill them. while the gop/media complex is putting out the story “more seniors concerned about killing them;” if this last campaign was any indication, it was many times we white and gray haired volunteers who got then senator obama’s campaign for change for our children and grandchildren’s future.

i still think the best way to pursue passage of health care reform with a public option, is to buy airtime in those blue tic districts and states such as montana, showing just how much each of their representatives receives from the health care industry and those like the chamber of commerce, to maintain the status quo. then ask the simple question:

in our representative for of democracy, just who is your representative representing?

That all comes down to who runs the media.

In the wake of Watergate, Nixon flunky William Simon vowed revenge and sought it by attempting the taking over all of the arbiters of reality: Colleges, newspapers, radio and TV networks. He encouraged conservative businesspeople to stop giving money to colleges and groups that weren’t conservative, and got them to start buying up or starting their own media.

It really is the GOP/Media Complex. Just look at who owns what.

What is the name of the health “care” industry’s organization that is sending out busloads of agitators to town hall meetings across the country to yell are congresscritters and senators? I am writing the sacbee about it.

We are going to have to take to the streets enmasse if we want to make an impression. I think Labor Day rallys across the country is a great idea. We need proven media liberals like Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to work up the liberal majority like O’Riely and Faux News promoted the tea parties. I know that health care rallys would dwarf the teabaggers in numbers. I live in Pittsburgh and a huge health care rally during the G20, highlighting the fact that every other country represented has universal health care in some form or the other would be very effective. I need help from FDL and others to help organize.

Obama’s strategy is to go to local hometown media. That’s what Town Halls are about. Local media tend to have more journalists (without grandiose ambitions) who report Who What When Where and Why, without interjecting their own opinion. Which is why Sinclair tried unsuccessfully to kill local reporting.

And Obama has been going into friendly areas whose television market extends into less friendly areas.

But our best way of getting the message out is with our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers who we can motivate to get the message out to their friends, family,…who they can motivate to…

But we often overlook this because we think that it’s more difficult than whipping progressive members of Congress.

How is that a cop-out? Your Republicans kept trying to run red herrings by means of amendments which weren’t within the authority of that committee.

I participate in the FEHB and would have no objection to the entire public participating. If the public participated, in the same way as civil servants, Congress would have to find a means of funding for government to pay portion of all citizens, the way they now do for employees. Essentially, that is what serous legislators (Democrats) are trying to do. If they only particpated by having access to the plans, it wouldn’t do much at all to expand coverage. It might reduce cost somewhat, just by virtue of the size of the market increasing competition.

Did you happen to notice when Congressman Weiner gave Republicans a chance to put their political futures where their mouths are, by voting to do away with the single-payer government healthcare plan called Medicare? Not a single one of them voted for the amendment.

Fighting back: have city councils or country goobernments across the country adopt resolutions backing at minimum a strong public option without firewalls, effective immediately, and at best, a single payer system. This should be done while the corrupt critters are at home on vacation.

Lambert, over at Corrente: ouch.

Media will not cover public demonstrations of any kind unless they are held by teabaggers.

If the point is to get media attention, we have to be creative. What can we do to get media attention that is legal, non-disruptive, and effective?

I like this “Buy Back Baucus” campaign. The “For Sale by Owner: Max Baucus” sign held by a single payer advocate is pretty funny.

Maybe hanging out near the doors to an Emergency Room at a public hospital would put us in contact with the people who are most angry.

I’m a little unclear on what you’re saying, here. I asked:

… [W]ill there come a time when any FDL front-pager will mention that Speaker Pelosi will give single payer a floor vote?

I just checked the front page (again).

I’m not seeing anything. Did I miss the “mention”?

We see the problem as how to influence legislators when most are bought and paid for. We need to organize locally on the internet, not just “progressives”, but everyone. We need to focus on a problem of local governance-not health care-which is more or less done for now. The problem should be non-threatening but interesting enough to attract lots of people. This doesn’t come cheap-we need lots of servers, but it eventually gives us the opportunity to express ourselves. We need to go slowly by indirection because most people do not want to take responsibility for collective activity. We need to know we are not alone. We need the comfort of numbers.

William Shatner should do beat poetry about healthcare reform.

How about a new verse of the Have you Had Enough song?

That is a very good idea. The song seemed to work and might get even more attention now.

Well, opening the Congressional health care plan to the public was not what Weiner was trying to do – I don’t think that would be legal, anyway.

What I think the goal was, was to get the rest of us the same kind of health-care coverage that Congress has, not the same plan.

watching travel shows on PBS… in Taiwan they pay the family doctor to keep them healthy….. when someone gets sick, the doctor pays the family back.

Thanks to Rep D. K. of Ohio the right plan is available . Washington hasn’t listened to the voters for over 30 years but your State governments do and thanks again to Rep D. K. each State can expand their present health care programs using stimulus money which would increase employment and health of each State with doctors under contract and paid for doing a good non-expensive job as is with the Mayo clinic system . If we get our heath care problems out of Washington to where we have a say in it we can have some control over our lives . Washington knows we are dying , going broke , and bankrupt because of medical charges . But Washington having caused the problems is palling around with another version of medicare that allows the providers to continue the increases that will break the government and enrich the providers . We must take the control of our lives out of Washington where there is no concern and make it local where we can be heard .

We need to get the message out to businesses, not just to individuals. We should stop letting the health insurance companies define the issue.

Business owners, shareholders, and executives should be made to think about how much they are paying already, not just for their own employees, but for the uninsured through cost shifting and taxes to pay for the uninsured. Health insurance companies are currently able to keep up prices and drive out competition.

When a business owner buys health insurance they buy what will be accepted by health care providers in that area. You can’t expect Doctors to spend time jumping through bureaucratic hoops for an unlimited number of companies, especially when each health insurance company, or HMO has a different set of bureaucratic hoops to leap. Just having the employees do the paperwork would not work because the rates the dominant insurance provider pays is much smaller than people who pay cash.

Having a public option would provide real competition to health insurance companies would finally add some competition to health insurance companies’ fiefdoms. That’s why they don’t want it, and why every other business should want a public option.

Citizen cameras should go to the emergency rooms of hundreds of hospitals and listen to the stories as they wait for attention. Set them up for viewing on utube or CDs sent to Congress people and Senators.

OK. We know thank Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd publically recognize their good luck to have their government paid healthcare…but with a little research we could ask other lawmakers to publically announce their healthcare benefits. Who gets prescription coverage for viagra, lipitor, etc. Whose spouses & children have received lifesaving treatments, etc. How many of our “retired” elected officials are accepting social security and retirement benefits although they are already wealthy? How can this information be gathered and posted?

All of us know someone who needs national healthcare so volunteer to accompany take that person or family to the home offices of their Senator and Representative and let them tell their story. Or write down their story on the back of a paper printed with Kucinnich’s plan and deliver it in person or send it. The act of representing Americans other than ourselves could be impressive- the reverse of the selfishness that gives money to wage war but doesn’t protect it own citizens. HEALTHCARE IS NATIONAL DEFENSE!

They have single payer in Taiwan.

They came to this country, looked at Medicare, and adopted Medicare for All.

Too bad we can’t do that in this country!

It’s a great, catchy song. I’ve been thinking about how successful the United Breakes Guitars song has been and maybe it’s time to resurrect the Had Enough song.

Would be cute if we could do a rickrolling campaign to Had Enough with a current verse.

Letter to Sacramento Bee:

Just Try Getting Sick

The lobbyist-run group, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, is sending busloads of hired and trained individuals to town hall meetings across the country. They are sent to disrupt and harass representatives as they attempt to discuss health care reform with their constituents. A recently leaked memo from the organization can be found if one searches online.

Some of the instructions in the memo include:
Artificially inflate your numbers by spreading through the town meeting.
Be distruptive early and often.
Try to “rattle him”, not have an intelligent debate.

AHIP, a trade group and lobbying powerhouse that represents the health insurance industry is sending people to town halls to observe. They want to delay and, then, kill health care reform. Just as they are killing and maiming mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, neighbors, brothers, and sisters. And if you don’t think they are willing to kill you, too, then just wait. Given enough time the health “care” industry will undercut your medical care; just try getting sick.

The health insurance cartel is now the health insurance mafia. You cross them and you will be dealt with. These are the people who are making decisions about your coverage, your life.

Recognise the danger of a SUBSIDISED MANDATE: I understand the idea behind the mandate: more people = lower costs, but in reality it may not work that way. The insurance industry is like the oil traders who gamed the market to $145 per barrel – they will maximise their profit, no matter who suffers. Health insurance costs will bankrupt our country, and a government subsidy makes it even more likely that costs will continue to rise. Consider a MANDATE WITHOUT A SUBSIDY: Citizens will be so angry at paying high premiums out-of-pocket that they will finally organize for change and begin to question the wisdom of for-profit healthcare. At minimum, insurers will be forced to lower prices and actually compete for customers. In the best case scenario, public anger will be so strong that citizens will insist on single-payer, if only to protect their own pockets. Progressives would be wise to put aside compassion and harness the power of a truly angry populace.

Some times you’ve got to dig a little to get the real story.

.
I’d like to see a poll on the public’s perceptions of sainted Blue Dogs vs. goddam Libruls on healthcare. Are the rubes buying it, or do they know who their friends are?

This will define, or redefine what Congress is in the next election. It’s the story behind the story of failed healthcare, but does the formerly MSM cover it?

How ya gonna vote after ya lose your healthcare?
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