It’s not just Jody Hall of Cupcake Royale who’s urging you to call your Senator about the wonky particulars of the health care reform bills that are currently being drawn up in Congress. Also in my in-box this morning, from the new Obama campaign incarnation known as Organizing for America:

As we speak, key committees in Congress are weighing options and making final decisions about how to tackle health care reform. This could be one of the last opportunities to shape the legislation before it’s written.

The behind-the-scenes committee negotiations aren’t front-page news, but the lobbyists trying to block reform are following every detail, and they won’t miss a day. If the final plan is to uphold President Obama’s principles of reduced costs, guaranteed choice — including a robust public insurance option — and quality care for all, your voice must be heard.

Please call your senators right now and ask them to support President Obama’s three principles for real health care reform. Our records show that you live in Washington. Please call:

Senior Senator Patty Murray at 202-224-2621

Junior Senator Maria Cantwell at 202-224-3441

What are Barack Obama’s three principles? From the e-mail:

•Reduce costs

•Guarantee a choice of plans and doctors—including the choice of a robust public insurance option

•Ensure quality, affordable care for every American

Sen. Patty Murray is already on record supporting the public insurance option (aka, the “public plan”). Sen. Maria Cantwell? Not so much.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

18 replies on “Also, Barack Obama Says So.”

  1. You should change this blog’s name to The Eli Sanders Obama Administration Press Release Cut-and-Paste Fanboy Showcase.
    Aren’t you guys the ones who get all pissed off when the newspapers regurgitate government propaganda without counterpoint? (see Drugs, War on).
    I guess that only applies to points of view you disagree with.

  2. The question is, you call the number, you get an aide answering the phone saying, “Senator Cantwell’s office,” and then what? Silence on the line. You can tell the aide that you’re a constituent who wants the senator to support a strong public option, and the aide will promise to pass it along, but what does that do, exactly? How does that phone call translate into actual support for the public option in the Senate? I made my call, and that’s what I’m worried about.

  4. @3:

    Ah yes:

    “To stay within the appropriated budget, Basic Health is no longer processing incoming applications to determine eligibility and has officially implemented a waiting list. New applicants will be placed on a list behind those already waiting. When space becomes available in the future, Basic Health will release names from the list in date-received order and notify applicants.”

    A “strong public option” doesn’t have to supplant basic health or medical or any of the other state-run systems, but it does have to make them accessible to everybody.

    Or, maybe we’re all wrong, and this sound and fury over health care is just a red herring!

  5. A single payer system isn’t going to be implemented instantaneously either you know. There’s no magic button to suddenly give people universal health care. Doing it piece mail seems MUCH more manageable than a super large, super organized super-insurance company.

    So, this article, as well as your article seem to say that the Group Health model is not perfect, I’m sure we all agree with that, but further, you seem to be arguing that because it’s not perfect we should not consider it as a viable option, when it absolutely is. Maybe not in it’s current form, but with a little fudging here and there it seems like it could work. At the very least it could work 100% better than some ephemeral idea of “SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE” for which there is no working model on the scale that the United States would need.

    Can we focus on exactly WHY a single payer system is better rather than why a co-op system sucks, because it seems that a single payer system would have the same problems.

  7. @2 – I don’t know what the number ratio is these days, but about a decade ago (when I actually worked on a lot more political issues), representatives used this ratio as a rule of thumb: every phone call/email they receive represents 200 other constituents that also feel that way but were too lazy to contact them.

    So, as an example, 10 phone calls makes them aware that about 2,000 people care about the topic. Obviously when they get 100s of people contacting them, they know that they’ve got a lot of concern among their voters and they may be a little more careful with their vote.

    That was awhile ago. I don’t know if that is still an acceptable ratio. If anyone has better information, I’d be curious about hearing it.

  8. This morning on CNBC they were still arguing that we need more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires instead of stimulus dollars.

    They’re spending tons of cash on lying about single payer national health care.

    If you do nothing, you’ll lose.

  9. Will, then take your own advice and do something. Explain why it’s better than the co-op “compromise.” Simply saying it’s better isn’t going to convince anyone.

  11. By the way, if anyone tries to equate “a robust public insurance option” with single-payer health care or to accuse Obama of secretly trying to bring us single-payer health care, call them out on their lies. All they’re trying to do is muddy the waters and scare people.

  12. @5,

    You copy-and-paste job from another thread, which has little relevance to this one, has sure convinced me!

    By the way, it’s piece meal, not piece mail.

  13. I did copy and paste a post of mine from another group-health/health care thread, becuase it contains simple questions that still have not been answered about (GASP!) the group health/health care issues that are being discussed in this thread. Thanks for pointing that out. If you go ahead and answer my questions, we’ll all be a little more enlightened. Or at least I will be.

    Also, sometimes my fingers move faster than my brain. I’m sure you understand, and would not hold a minor typo on an internet messageboard against me.

  16. Alright, fuck you too then, high and mighty defender of Slog threads.

    Maria Cantwell supports using Group Health as health care model for universal health care. Eli says that she does not support the Public Plan. This thread is about urging her to support that Public Plan rather than the Group Health style plan.

    So, yeah, it IS a Group Health thread.

  17. Okay, so I just called and her office told me that she does support a robust public option. I asked, “Okay, so she supports something like Medicare for all?” and the staffer replied in the affirmative.

  18. Per our conversation this weekend, Sen. Cantwell personally favors Medicare For All.

    Her pragmatic concern is that MFA doesn’t have the votes. To avoid a legislative shutout (and probably another 16 – 24 year wait for the next “health care moment”), she will take the best we can get – which may be as little as a co-op model.

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