Right now in D.C., inside ornate committee meeting rooms and cluttered congressional offices, plans for a radical redesign of America's health-care system are being rolled out. Also being rolled out: strategies for torpedoing any meaningful change to a system that Republicans and Democrats alike agree is broken—but is nevertheless extremely profitable for certain vested interests. Between the House and the Senate, there are five committees each drafting its own version of the nation's new health-care plan, and Washington State has six congressional representatives sitting on those committees. Here's what they're all pushing for (and against) and how you can push them.
Senator Patty Murray (D)
Murray sits on the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which has produced the best plan the Senate has to offer: It includes near-universal coverage, a government-backed "public option" that would compete with private insurers to bring down costs, and a ban on using preexisting conditions to disqualify Americans from getting coverage. Call her at 202-224-2621 or 206-553-5545, and tell her to hold firm—and suggest she have a chat with the junior senator from Washington (see next page).
Senator Maria Cantwell (D)
When Washington's junior senator was appointed to the Senate's powerful Finance Committee in 2006, Cantwell promised to use the opportunity to "fight" for health-care reform. But lately she's been meekly toeing a line laid down by committee chair Max Baucus (D-Montana), who's dead set on a bipartisan solution to health care even though Republicans don't have great ideas about health care and Democrats currently control both houses of Congress and the White House. Bipartisan, in this context, has come to mean abandoning the public option—which experts and reform advocates say is necessary for real change—and instead promoting the "co-op compromise" offered by a senior Democrat from North Dakota. What Cantwell doesn't seem to understand is that the politics of her committee (never mind the politics of North Dakota and Montana) are not the politics of Washington State. Nor are they the politics of the United States as a whole, where polling shows 72 percent of Americans support the public option. Call her at 202-224-3441 or 206-220-6400, and tell her to support the public option—and when she tells you she already does, tell her to define her terms. Lately, Cantwell has taken to redefining public option so that it means co-op compromise. Slippery. They're not at all the same thing.
Representative Dave Reichert (R)
Because he represents Washington's politically-mixed 8th Congressional District, which runs along the east side of Lake Washington, conservative Reichert has to say things that make him sound like a nice, reasonable, moderate guy. On July 2, he told KUOW: "There needs to be a public option." Hooray! A Republican so enlightened that he's even to the left of Maria Cantwell! Nope. Within the span of a few on-air seconds, Reichert then elaborated: "We don't want a government takeover of health care. If government's running one side of it and they can print money, I think that the private-sector health-care system will have a tough time keeping pace." Huh? That's the whole point of the public option: The government enters the private health-insurance market, not to take over all of American health care but just to offer an alternative that forces private insurers to keep costs competitive. Wisdom of the markets and all, right? Reichert? Can we hear an amen for the invisible hand? Call him at 202-225-7761 or 206-275-3438, and tell him to keep saying "there needs to be a public option," ditch the rest, and vote the right way when the time comes.
Representative Jim McDermott (D)
Don't worry about McDermott. Seattle's congressman-till-forever is a doctor and has been so hardcore about health-care reform for so long that he finds all of the options on the table this year—public option included—to be way short of what he wants. Ideally, McDermott wants America to have a single-payer health-care system, just like a lot of other advanced democracies in which health care is cheaper and universally available—places like Canada and Britain, for example. But for now, McDermott's pushing the public option, in part as a test of whether this year's reform effort is serious. "It all stands or falls on that," said his spokesman, Mike DeCesare. "If there isn't a public option, you're not going to have real health-care reform." Somewhat surprisingly, McDermott won't promise to vote against any bill that doesn't have a public option. He says that's because he's confident the final House bill will include one. Call him at 202-225-3106 or 206-553-7170, and tell him he better make sure that happens.
Representative Jay Inslee (D)
Don't worry about Inslee, either. The Democrat from Washington's 1st District—which covers south Snohomish County and the Kitsap Peninsula—is for a "strong public option." He's over that whole debate. He already has his mind on the next battle: how to create a new system without bankrupting the country. Inslee is in favor of implementing doctor peer review to get medical providers to limit unnecessary tests and procedures, and he wants to get away from the pay-for-service model (which creates perverse incentives for doctors to perform unnecessary services). Call him at 202-225-6311 or 206-361-0233, and tell him to keep up the good fight.
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R)
Unlike Reichert, McMorris Rodgers, who represents Spokane and a huge swath of Eastern Washington, doesn't even pretend to like the public option. "What is being proposed, another government takeover, is not the answer," she wrote recently in a note to constituents. "Proposals to establish a government or public option are nothing more than an attempt to have federal bureaucrats tell you what your health-care needs are, instead of those who know you best, like your physician, nurse practitioner, or pharmacist." Bullshit. Even if the public option passes, Americans will be free to keep their private insurance if they like it better. Call her at 202-225-2006 or 509-353-2374, and tell her to stop with the crazy scare tactics. 
