Contact the White House!

I sent off my pitch for single payer health care to the White House last week - after I learned that no one, NO ONE, not from Congress nor from any physician based group had been invited to their big meeting on health care reform. I checked the box titled "no need to send a reply"; I didn't want to receive one of those lame assurances of concern I get from my congressional representatives.

This morning my husband and I decided that we would both write notes to the White House every day in support of the single payer plan - and a free Palestine (more on this issue in later posts). We will include our congressional representatives (although I noticed that when we discussed which reps, neither of us mentioned Herb Kohl (my thought is that he really doesn't represent us - just himself; but I digress). We don't need to write more than a sentence or two; no one reads to understand what we say, they only tally the issues: "for" or"against".

Yesterday I watched a strangely inarticulate Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), head of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the biggest beneficiaries of payoffs (albeit in advance, but let's call them what they really are) by health insurers and the drug industry in the Senate with $413,000. What he said was, "Well, I just have to make a judgment. And I think at this time in this country, single payer is not going to get even to first base in the Congress. I just—and we’re also—we’re a big—we’re a big country. It’s—you know, we’re a battleship. We’re an ocean liner. We’re not a PT boat. We’re not a speedboat." This, from Democracy Now!

Take a look at this piece from the March 8 2009 Washington Post: "Consumer Watchdog, formerly known as the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, says the amount of money pouring into Congress from the health-care sector raises questions about the independence of lawmakers as they consider dramatic changes to the health-care system. The group conducted the study using Federal Election Commission data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, isolating the insurance and pharmaceutical categories from the broader health-care sector."

Even though President Obama was elected on a mandate for change he has been back-peddling on the single payer issue. He supported it, or said he did, when he first ran for his senatorial seat but on his run up to the presidency, he began to move away from his earlier stance. Listen to Amy Goodman's interview with Obama's friend and former doctor Dr. Quentin Young, Chicago Physicians for a National Health Program, also on her March 18 Democracy Now program. Contrary to President Obama's statement, I am guessing that Americans are not so "acustomed" to their health care being provided by their employers that they wouldn't be REALLY happy to have a single payer system in place that would allow them the safety net of being able to move from one employer to another and still keep the same health benefits. Pre existing conditions would just ride along with continuing coverage. Yes, we have a system in place, but it isn't the system we should be building on. We SHOULD start over and if we were able to set Medicare in place, it shouldn't be that difficult to set up a single payer system for every American citizen.

If you want to send a message to the White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/ or

if you want to write:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

or call:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Until next time.