Dear BT List Friends,
Below is the text of a letter from my brother, who earned his PHD in
Public Health from Johns Hopkins the year after I was diagnosed with
Brain Cancer. He is one of the people I trust to know what is going on
with health care reform and how I can help to work for the changes this
country needs so badly in this area. Those of us who have been touched
by Brain Tumors know better than most how much suffering can result from
the inadequacies of our current system. I hope you will read what he
says and that you will take the actions he suggests. I'm not interested
or remotely qualified to debate this issue or political positions in
this forum, so please just look through what is written below and see if
it makes sense for you. I will follow what he (Steve) with the text of
an email I will be sending out to my Representative, the HR's Majority
Leader and Speaker for those of you that would like to participate but
are not sure what to write. I hope you will join me in trying to make
the best of our current realities.
Richard Harvey
PXA 3 survivor, 4 3/4 years stable.
*"Obama, Dems consider pared-back health care bill"*
**
That's the latest Associated Press headline in the wake of last night's
election debacle in Massachusetts, and if the Democrats head down that
path, health care reform is DEAD!
It doesn't have to be that way. The next 2-3 days will be critical, and
you can help keep health care reform from dying.
I know a little bit about this. In the early 1990s, I spent several
years working on a campaign for national health care reform. When Bill
Clinton was elected in 1992, we knew we wouldn't get Single Payer, but
we thought we would get something. Many of the participants in that
campaign were senior citizens in their 70s and 80s. They often said that
if Clinton didn't manage to pass some kind of reform bill, it would be
another 20 years before we'd have another chance.
Unfortunately, they were absolutely right. Even more unfortunately,
almost all of them are now dead.
We haven't come this far to wait another generation - by which time many
of us will also be gone.
The Democrats can avoid a filibuster in the Senate by having the House
of Representatives vote for the Senate bill with no changes. If the
House approves the Senate bill unaltered, it goes directly to the
President for signature - no conference committee and no chance for the
Senate to block it.
The Senate bill stinks. It's a poor excuse for health care reform - much
less than we wanted or deserve. But it's a step forward. On that step,
we can construct other things. Congress can amend and improve the bill
using a budget reconciliation resolution. It only requires a simple
majority in the Senate - 51 votes instead of 60.
History suggests that even a bare foundation can provide the basis for
improvement. Medicare and Social Security both started out as much
weaker programs than they are now. On the foundation of those weaker
programs, many congresses and many administrations were able to build
something more robust.
The House leadership - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer and others - can make this happen. A lot of people right now
must be telling them that the Massachusetts results indicate that the
voters have rejected health care reform.
WE need to provide some pressure in the other direction.
Please take a moment NOW to send an email to your own representative as
well as Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer.
This link will take you directly to Nancy Pelosi's email:
http://www.speaker.gov/contact/
This one will take you directly to Hoyer's email:
http://democraticleader.house.gov/email_and_rss/email_the_leader/
If you do not know how to contact your own representative, you can find
out here: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml . You will
need your 10-digit zip code.
While you're at it, contact the White House, too:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Don't write a long letter - just a brief message urging each contact to
push the House to approve the Senate bill unaltered. It's a numbers
game, and you can be sure they're getting plenty of contacts from the
other side.
Sorry if I sound like a shrill ideologue or a canned email from MoveOn -
I've received too many of those, too. But some quick action now can make
the difference between keeping health care reform alive or having the
whole effort crash and burn until who knows when. Why should we allow
the Joe Lieberman's the Ben Nelsons and the Scott Browns of this world
to deny all Americans a more just, more economical, and more effective
health system?
Please take a minute and do this NOW. There's nothing you will do in the
next 24 hours that could possibly be so important.
Thanks,
Steve *(My Brother)
Email I am sending to my Representative, The Speaker and The Majority
Leader.
*
Dear Representative/Speaker/Majority Leader;
Given the results of the recent election in Massachusetts, I hope you
will support a vote to approve the Senate’s Health Care Reform bill. We
need to make some progress on this issue, even if it is modest compared
to what we might have hoped for in early 2009. I am a brain cancer
survivor and was fortunate, after a vigorous fight, to qualify for
California’s Medical program after I was declared medically disabled. I
lost my job and could not afford to pay my family’s health insurance.
After two years, I qualified for Medicare, so now I’m covered, but with
California’s budget crisis as it is, if I were diagnosed today I would
not qualify for any significant help from Medical. Our family would most
likely be out on the street or living with relatives. California is the
exception in the United States being a state that offers a medical
safety net for some of it’s citizens. Most states don’t. It costs my
wife 1/3 of her monthly earnings for health insurance by the time we add
in co-pays to the premiums. This is a major hardship, but we are lucky
we can scrape the funds together. Bankruptcy is quite common for people
in situations like ours, so we feel lucky to be in our home with food to
eat and our lights on.
Please vote to pass the Senate Health Care Bill. We need to get this
process started.
(Thanks again for taking the time to read this blog and hopefully act
accordingly Peace and Blessings, Richard Harvey)
