Democracy requires thinking, and urgent calls to action can often be translated, “No time to think. Just act.” There are such pressing times, of course. Now is one of them. But no soldier can fight at the front for the full duration of a war.

Hi Glenn,

Great blog post! I’m here to help out in the fight:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7679

- Tom

My total SS income is $8868/year; I don’t pay any taxes, and my total monthly health care costs (including my HMO premium) can run as high as $300/month, even with Extra Help with Medicare D.

But I’d certainly forgo some of that income if it would help cover the folks I care about among the homeless, uninsured and under-insured working folks I’ve been talking with over the last two years who are, as I am, suffering with neuropathy. But they are getting no or really crappy medical care for their conditions, whereas my Advantage HMO coverage is reasonably appropriate for my chronic conditions.

As I read the HR676 bill, there may be things I might not like (I hate that it might take 15 years to convert the present for-profit system to a totally non-profit one, but that’s certainly longer that the 2013 first very limited entry into the Public Option that is now proposed for HR 3200.

I so appreciate Glenn’s post for it gives me comfort in the context of having decided in the last year that I will no longer “kill myself”, as I had for several recent years in aggressive, intense activism on behalf of those with neuropathy in my ever expanding world.

I could spend hours at FDL and lots of other places trying to educate myself and have no time or energy to work on educating others in my healthcare network; lobbying Rep. Mike Thompson or Senators Feinstein and Boxer; or exercising to improve my health status; or spending extra time to prepare nutritious meals; or nurturing my spiritual life in and out of the eucharist. And yet all five are necessary for my well being (and sanity).

For years people have told me that I must take care of myself or I can’t help others. Thank God I never married and had children to raise, and so didn’t have to fight the family vs. career battles of most women of my generation. But those who gave the loving warnings were right. There must be rest for the weary, there must be times for replenishment, there must be time for the joy of music and art and yoga and water aerobics and lap swimming, church attendance and meditation/spiritual reading, and planning to prepare healthy meals for my 90 year old Dad and me.

This last week I participated in an interfaith SacACT (Sacramento Area Congregations Together), which is a long time member of the national organization PICO (People Involved in Community Organizations)which was loosely based on a modified and softened Saul Alinsky style of community organizing. This was an “action” (vs. town hall) with a rep from Congresswoman Doris Matsui’s office present.

(She is not holding town halls and is coming under great criticism from the right wingers who long to excoriate her for her long history of liberal positions on many issues, especially services for the poor, some of which had been in partnership with SacACT, with which she’s had a long and fruitful relationship, as they’ve worked together on several health service expansion projects over the years.)

I had attended a SacACT “prayer vigil” earlier in the month that was really a simple pep rally attended by mostly white folks from numerous mainline congregations, but with a multi-racial/ethnic interfaith contingent of usual leaders/speakers. It was a nice event with a few tiny moments of actual inspiration. There were large posters and stick-on labels that said, “Our Community Supports Health Reform” but there was never any substantive content on what that meant, functionally, in relation to what kind of health reform that PICO wanted. I would learn more in weeks to follow.

I later followed up with the local and national organizers and a quasi-friend local board member to express my concerns about the paucity of information about the bills, what they did and did not cover, what needed to be changed/added/deleted, etc. I’d asked the local organizer if SacACT had taken a position on the bills; she replied that there was no consensus among the congregations yet. And none would be likely, until much later, as the board member later explained at the “action” last week, “It’s not appropriate to be discussing the bills very much as there are no final bills to respond to.” But don’t you see a need to try to form the content of the proposed bills before and during the continuing congressional debate? What if you don’t like, maybe even can’t stand what Congress comes up with? “We have no bills, there’s no need to spend any time on what does now exist.” But there are several bills pending, why aren’t you comparing all the bills and making recommendations, at least based upon PICO’s principles (which are reasonable, as per the document distributed at the event)? “There are no bills…….”

At that point, I gave up trying to communicate with my friend, who is a quite liberal, very well-off retiree. But I wanted to say: So, what if you get a bill that does not meet PICO’s accessibility and affordability standards, what are you going to do? Will you tell your reps to vote against it? When we contact our reps, are we going to tell them PICO’s “lines in the sand” or does PICO really have any? To what extent do any of the present proposals meet those bottom lines? And more importantly, does SacACT have lines in the sand and what analysis and advocacy plan, if any, have they done to insure that the bills meet them?

[And then I had to ask myself, and what systematic analysis have you done, MarChan? Very damn little, in all honesty, and I was ashamed, but I was also so tired and passed the hurting.stage to real pain again……]

We were gathered at the SacACT “action” to hear testimonies of a diverse collection of SacACT members. They ranged in age from a diabetic highschooler at risk of losing Healthy Family benefits because of California budget cuts, to a disabled and laid off prematurely retired widowed woman, to a very dear friend who is a much older parish nurse retiree, complaining about meds costing her and her husband an extra $250/month, [Let me tell you about a woman on disability whose meds cost $800/month, because of the Medicare D sell out years ago, I wanted to scream!], to an ordained nurse working in pediatric oncology and a woman family practitioner serving uninsured and MediCal families. The stories of all were instructive in reflecting some of the many atrocious limitations of the present screwed up medical industry, but the latter two were most moving.

[There were, however, absolutely no mentions of any of the many [for me] immoral provisions of the grossly profitable deals Obama struck with the medical industries in the proposed HR 3200 and maybe HELP bill, that I’m less familiar with.]

We heard one speaker talk about my former congregation’s long process of fact finding analysis of problems and minimalist review of the proposed legislative solutions. We heard the challenge to call our representative every week until there was a bill; those who committed to the challenge raised their hands, but I don’t know the percentage of those present who made the commitment. What were we to say?

“Well, when you call, you might just say, Get us a health reform bill.”

I nearly fell out of my pew seat. That’s all! Any old bill would do? For Christ’s sake, that isn’t enough, can’t be enough. Don’t you all understand that? I was in despair as I returned home to read the handouts distributed at the “action.”

In the document statement entitled, PICO’s Cover All Families Campaign, the first paragraph includes these two sentences

Health care is on the front burner in Washington, DC, but the outcome of the debate will be decided in our communities. Each of us has a vital role to play in making sure that this time health reform succeeds.

Well, it seems to me that just saying “Get us a health reform bill” isn’t fulfilling PICO’s mandate and it certainly isn’t fulfilling my evolving moral necessity of the position(s) on the various bills as I continue to educate myself in preparing for ongoing more lobbying of my reps and informing my health care communities about some critical issues, if only at most superficial levels, with my personal recommendations for what bottom lines should be.

So, thanks Glenn for calling me to rest but also to keep moving. Thanks to God for the grace to honor both calls. And thanks to FDL for being part of my intellectual and spiritual nurturance, even when God is never mentioned.

Blessings to all,

Well, this could be considered a hopeful sign of accountabilty in government,although not OUR government.:

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Former Israeli PM Olmert chargedAug 30, 2009 … Israeli ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is indicted in three cases of corruption, the attorney general’s office says.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8229521.stm – 3 hours ago – Similar

Substitute health insurers for the word government much truthier eh?

We need to make the 2010 Elections the SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION and elect those who believe in the ideals of the Founders and the Constitution.

Our founding fathers didn’t roll that way bud. Their ideals were the antithesis of everything you have implied in your comments.

This whole post is about being calm when Chicken Little comes with the news that he thinks the sky is falling. It’s about helping your neighbors.

What help do you have for us?