The push for health care reform is moving fast and furiously, so I thought it’d be helpful to have semi-daily “Health on the Hill” updates that should help you keep track of the reform debate and get to the meat of the issue. Enjoy!
Today’s Updates – 11/6/09:
The House of Representatives is scheduled to begin debate on their health care bill, The Affordable Health Care for America Act – H.R. 3962, this weekend. The final House legislation was released a couple weeks ago and is now ready to be voted on by our Representatives. However, as has been the case throughout this entire health care reform process, there may be some delays that would push the vote back to Monday or Tuesday — “some delays” meaning: more discussions about abortion and immigration to stall the way-bigger-than-those-two-issues health care bill.
This bill, which — among many other things — will contain costs, end discrimination based on pre-existing conditions or gender, extend coverage for young adults under their parents’ plan, and provide a public insurance plan that will compete with private plans, has not included language about keeping illegal immigrants from buying insurance in the new insurance marketplace, and this one omission is bothering many Representatives. However the bill does state that illegal immigrants will not be eligible to receive federal subsidies to purchase insurance. So even though the bill requires illegal immigrants to buy insurance or be fined with a penalty tax, it is not going to help them purchase it. Awesome — makes perfect sense.
Another reform deal-breaker for many Reps is abortion, and although the House bill clearly states that federal funds given out under reform will not be used to cover abortion, this language isn’t good enough for some and they are fighting to include amendments that strengthen the prohibition for abortion funds. Why abortion cannot be covered like any other medical procedure we have a right to is beyond me, but my opinion, and that of millions of others, is apparently neither here nor there in this debate.
Another topic of discussion that is sure to be included in tomorrow’s debate is the GOP’s alternative health care bill. Or, what I like to call, a plan only insurance companies could love, or the bill that will leave 52 million people uninsured and actually charge more for people with pre-existing conditions. Way to go guys. Luckily, the Republican bill has no chance of passing, but they had to produce something since all they were doing all these months was saying “no” to the other bills on the table.
So this is it. After the GOP bill gets laughed off of the stage and immigrants and abortion likely barred from being covered, the House will vote to pass their first piece of health care reform legislation. But while they decide their vote they have to hear from you. Especially after hearing from anti-reform crowds led by our favorite Rep. Bachmann yesterday.
A man at the Bachmann protest yesterday holds this sign –which doesn’t even make any sense.
It’s your turn to make your voice heard: Contact your Rep NOW and urge them to pass the House Health Care bill, H.R. 3962!
This week, climate activists from Washington University organized a flash mob at a coal funded “America’s Energy Future” forum. Check out the video of their extremely successful action:
At the forum there was no representation from clean energy industries and most of the panelists came from coal corporations that recently joined the board of the St. Louis Missouri university. This is what the student activists had to say:
Students wish to highlight the close relationship between the university administration and the coal industry. Students have already expressed unease that the University is “too cozy” with coal… The University has dedicated $60 million in financial resources to the creation of a Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The name of this consortium has sparked controversy among many students and faculty, who have argued that the industry term “clean coal” has no place in scientific research.
The students also highlighted a new report released by the National Academy of Sciences that calculated the hidden costs of coal consumptions to be over $60 billion dollars per year in health, environmental, and social costs and a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance demonstrating that Missouri could meet its energy needs entirely through renewable energy.
But it doesn’t end there! Newsweek and the American Petroleum Institute recently partnered to launch their own forums on clean energy, despite API’s continued efforts to undermine climate legislation and deceive the general public. Petroleum companies have much to gain from the ‘clean coal’ insanity due to their expertise in drilling and their extensive pipeline infrastructure. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t as Carbon Capture and Sequestration is an untested technology with no proven record and that is expected to be extremely expensive to implement even if possible.
Newsweek’s journalistic integrity is at stake when they partner with organizations who’s whole purpose is to push disinformation and halt honest conversations about the energy future of the United States. I have crashed a Newsweek energy event already and I was the only young person in the audience. We will be present and numerous at these forums, possibly borrowing some tactics by the young climate activists at Washington University.
One year ago, my generation -adults ages 18-34 – saturated the voting polls across the country, casting their votes in record numbers with hope that things could change.
One year later, Congress is making progress on several of the issues that weighed on our minds as we stood in line to vote; one of them being health care, which is close to having a piece of legislation aimed at resolving our broken system.
On November 4th, Campus Progress and a coalition of 20 youth organizations that form the Y.I. Want Change Coalition, hosted a national day of action called Y.I. (Still) Want Change. This day marked the anniversary of last year’s historic election and made a strong, collective demand for comprehensive health care reform in events across the country.
Young people gathered in more than 20 states to participate in 44 events (representing our 44th President), including states such as Connecticut, Massachusetts and Montana – states represented by Senators that have a big stake in the health care debate. These events ranged from film screenings, to photo petition drives, to phonebanks and rallies.
Y.I. Still Want Change also engaged thousands of young health care reform supporters on Facebook, where they signed a photo petition demanding reform from Congress.
You can still participate in the Y.I. Want Change petition now by signing the photo petition on Facebook and changing your status to read:
Health care reform is one of the most pressing issues facing our country, yet there has been little discussion about the health care needs of young adults. Young people make up one third of the uninsured, but our voices are not being heard in the health care debate. November 4th’s national day of action had a mission to change that.
As Erica Williams, our Deputy Director here at Campus Progress, has said, “Young people have fought for months to make our voices heard in this debate. At this critical moment, on campuses and in communities across the country, we are showing our leaders that we are engaged and ready to hold them accountable for delivering real, comprehensive, health care reform.”
In addition to calling attention to young Americans’ health care needs, the Y.I. Want Change coalition supports a set of policy priorities to ensure that health care reform addresses those needs. The coalition formally announced these policy priorities at a press conference with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a few weeks ago.
Some of these policies include removing the “Young Invincibles” plan – the catastrophic insurance plan written into the Senate Finance Committee’s bill- from legislation, extending coverage under your parents’ insurance plan until age 26, and securing funding to educate young adults on the benefits of their new health care system after reform.
If Michael Myers and other Halloween-related phenomenon (like inebriated Ewoks) make you jumpy, the practices of many for-profit (“proprietary”) schools should give you chills all year. The Washington Monthly just published a great article on the aggressive and misleading marketing that some of these schools engage in, as well as the disturbing way that they push students into dangerous levels of debt.
In a nutshell, many of the institutions in this sector ultimately care about one thing: getting “asses in classes.” Aggressive recruiters often oversell chances and salaries of graduates, as well as other aspects of the program, and pay little attention to whether the student can benefit at the school or whether they have any chance of paying off their loans. Read the rest of this entry »
As I mentioned in a previous post, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is an energy efficiency geek and that’s why he is loved by anyone that has a rational view on energy policy.
Today he gave us efficiency geeks another reason to gloat by writing a fantastic piece on HuffingtonPost explaining in plain words the importance of home weatherization (or ”saving money by saving energy” as he likes to say) and outlining new federal programs to help average Americans cope with the high upfront cost that comes with reducing residential energy use.
Just like Berkeley’s fantastic solar initiative, the new Department of Energy plan will make low-interest loans available for people investing in efficiency improvements in their homes. The loan will be tied to your property taxes and therefore stay with the house.
The homeowners might pay an extra $400 per year on their property tax bill but save $500 a year on their utility bill. Since the financing would be attached to the property tax bill, both the savings and the loan payments stay with the house if the owners decide to sell.
These are the type of programs that will make sustainability improvements accessible to everyday Americans and that result in saving people money, reducing harmful carbon pollution, cleaning up our air, and creating millions of new jobs.
Unfortunately, all the programs announced by the Secretary of Energy are backed by a token sum that isn’t nearly enough to rapidly and effectively reduce our emissions at the levels they need to be.
Every week, tons of groups come out with great videos about the climate crisis. Some focus on youth activism, some are just plain funny, while others are compelling more than any before. I’ll try to share the best ones with you all in a semi-weekly blog post. Happy viewing!
Fist off, legislators and the media love to say that people don’t support climate legislation even though every poll and common sense show the opposite. Check out the RepowerWall and add your voice to demonstrate the unstoppable avalanche of support for ending the climate crisis:
Can you imagine if every child in the world knew how much older generations are dragging their feet on climate? I can’t, but fortunately Moms Against Climate Change did the thinking for me, check it out:
And finally, exposing corruption. Dunno if you heard, but a bunch of coal industry lobbyists were recently caught red (green?) handed for sending fake letters to congresspeople from groups of color in opposition to the climate bill. As much as most of our reaction would be to punch them in the face, the Avaaz Action Factory one-upped them by wearing astro-turf suits and shaking the culprit’s hands. Check out these courageous fighters:
The push for health care reform is moving fast and furiously, so I thought it’d be helpful to have semi-daily “Health on the Hill” updates that should help you keep track of the reform debate and get to the meat of the issue. Enjoy!
Today’s Updates – 10/29/09:
Today marked a big day in the health care reform journey that we have all been on this year, and it was an even bigger day for those that have been fighting this fight for decades. The House of Representatives released their health care bill today — and made quite the production of it, with Speaker Pelosi and about half of the Democratic Caucus entering the stage of the press conference to U2 blaring over the loud speakers. Standing there on the stage behind these proud Members of Congress filing in to Bono made me think about what a special day for celebration it was, while simultaneously thinking about how oddly comical politics can be sometimes. As Representatives danced their way to their seats, and Pelosi took the podium, the tone of this significant announcement settled down and focused on the real reasons why we were all there: to ensure health care coverage for those that need it, make insurance affordable for everyone and stop the horrible practices of the insurance companies.
Along with many Representatives that spoke on the various provisions included in the bill, such as the long-debated public option and strong affordability measures, constituents from each of their districts shared their personal hardships with our current health system. One such story almost knocked me off of the stage. A mother of three triplets that were conceived by In Vitro Fertilization was denied health insurance based on a claim that she had a pre-existing condition of “infertility”, and her husband was denied coverage based on “spousal infertility” as a pre-existing condition. These are the kinds of ridiculous practices that will now be illegal.
The House bill will not only end denials based on pre-existing conditions, gender, age or income, but it will insure 96% of the population, expand Medicaid to more low-income Americans, offer a health insurance exchange in which plans can be purchased, including a public plan provided by the government (the public option), and it will reduce the deficit by $30 billion over the first ten years. This bill came out to be pretty strong — We’ll just have to see whether the public option stays in the bill on its journey from the House floor to Conference (when the House and Senate bills are merged), and if it does remain in the final legislation, how many people will really have access to it. As it stands now, the Congressional Budget Office has said that only about 6 million people would gain insurance through the public option included in this new House legislation.
However, one of the biggest victories in the bill for our generation — the Millenial generation of young adults ages 18-34– was the provision to extend coverage under our parents’ insurance plan up to our 27th birthday. This provision comes at no cost to taxpayers and is just a common sense solution to ensuring coverage for young adults.
All in all it was a happy day for health care and a reminder that we still have a journey ahead of us as we await the CBO score for the Senate bill and look forward to both chambers hashing it out on the floor to debate their legislation and get us one step closer to a strong bill for health care reform.
However, the House is always an entirely different cup of tea than the Senate..so a bumpy road may still lie ahead!
What time did you wake up yesterday morning? I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to go down to the Dirksen Senate Office Building and attend the first hearing for the new climate bill. The bill, co-sponsored by Senator Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Boxer (D-CA), is called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act — aka CEJAPA and is similar in many ways to the recently passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) in the House.
Along with other 10 young people, dressed in Halloween garbs or green t-shirts , we tried to get into the hearing room to show that young people are paying attention and are ready to hold our elected officials accountable. Unfortunately, due to corporate hired linestanders, we weren’t able to get in. Linestanders you ask? Yup, here is how it works:
Hearing rooms are small, especially considering that most seats go to Senate staffers (from offices of Senators who aren’t on the committee) and press. Most hearings are held with barely any ordinary citizen in the room, but some contentious ones — like recent healthcare, defense and climate hearings – fill up pretty quick. The few spots left are open on a first-come, first-serve basis meaning that people need to make sure to get there early if they care to have a seat in clear view of the senators and the CSPAN cameras.
Just like young people desperately want legislators to see them (and we make sure they do by wearing bright green t-shirts, holding hard hats on our laps, and holding small 8.5 x 11 signs), so do the lobbyists that bring so much money to their election coffers. Thirteen line-standers for corporate lobbyists were in line ahead of us, but there were only nine seats were available in the room so we weren’t successful this time around. Young people waiting in line made a pretty big splash nonetheless by talking to Senators and press as they were making their way into the room.
After making sure that the young people who came from as far as Maryland were OK with going to the overflow room, I darted back to the office to listen to the hearing through the Committee website (more hearings are going on today and tomorrow, check them out here if you are interested).
The hearings were surprisingly interesting. For minute-to-minute summary, check out my live-blog about the opening remarks and about the testimonies. There were three things that came up during the hearing that every person concerned about the climate crisis should know:
Fact #1: 47 million people are uninsured while another 87 million are underinsured
Fact #2: 18,000 people die every year because of a lack of proper health care.
Fact #3: 73% of physicians support a public option.
(Want more facts? Click here)
When looking at the facts, the answer to how to fix our broken health care system seems obvious. As the health care debate continues, the art of politics, or should I say, the bureaucracy within our democratic Congress, has made this answer more complicated than it should be.
Yesterday morning, Campus Progress attended a hearing, “Costs of Broken Health Care System, Benefits of Public Option,” hosted by Representative Jackson-Lee and Representative Conyers, who convened patients, physicians, and experts to push for a robust public option.
This hearing was by no means a political debate about health care; it was instead, an opportunity for individuals to give testimony to why the public option plays a fundamental role in the health and happiness of all Americans. While many of us are trying to understand the politics of the health care reform legislation, the answer becomes clear once you listen to the tragedies that many of our fellow Americans have had to endure due to poor or no coverage.
During the hearing, we watched a 3-minute clip of a film, “Reinventing Paradise,” where the producer, Natalie Noel, was also present and gave testimony. Natalie is a cancer patient whose insurance coverage was recently terminated and her 3-minute clip captures stories of Gulf Coast residents who have suffered health-care hardships post-Katrina. Representative Jackson-Lee responded to Noel’s film and testimony by stating, “although all of us want to believe we live in a democracy…we know some are left out; the sick, the frail, the mentally ill…those who can’t tell their stories.”
There were more than twenty witnesses who gave testimony, including a woman named Joan Kosloff. Joan came to the hearing on behalf of her son, Eric, who died last year to pneumonia due to his lack of health insurance. As Joan gave her testimony, pictures were passed around of Eric (who was 44) and his 3 year old daughter—it was very difficult to hold back tears. After her testimony, Dr. Carson of Johns Hopkins responded, “we must build a powerful coalition of consciousness” to remind members of Congress of what the consequences may be without a public option.
While every member of Congress is faced with 3.5 lobbyists working for insurance companies, testimonies like these should win out over lobbyist propaganda because these stories unveil the truth that this fight is no longer for a public “option,” it is for a public necessity.
Join our friends at Choice USA for a National Call-In Day TODAY to support comprehensive sex education!
It is wide-spread knowledge that abstinence-only sex education has not proven to be effective in preventing sexually-transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies. There has even been a highly conclusive congressional study showing that it has grievously failed our society as a substitute for sex education. However, leaders of our nation still insist on using our money to fund wishful thinking instead of facts, thereby cheating young adults of comprehensive sex education and putting their health and future at risk.
In a little-known subplot of the health care reform discussion, ineffective abstinence education just might get a big boost, thanks to Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Sen. Hatch proposed an amendment to the Senate Finance Committee health care proposal to give $50 million in funding to abstinence-only programs. The amendment just squeaked by (with 12 out of 23 votes) to rear its disingenuous head in the committee’s final bill.
Concerned citizens living in areas where abstinence-only programs are currently taught could turn to more successful strategies of sex education, once government funding expires in the coming years. But now, if Hatch’s amendment makes it to the reform bill that reaches President’s Obama’s desk, we can all look forward to incomprehensive sex education that could result in another decade of increasing rates of HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).
Responsible legislators must block this bogus amendment from getting through Congress. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who supports comprehensive, effective sex education, is in the small group that is compiling the Senate’s final health care reform bill, and it is imperative that he eliminate Hatch’s agenda from their plan. We owe it to our nation’s youth, and to all those who have suffered from disease and unwanted pregnancy because they were never given realistic tools to prevent it.
Join Choice USA NOW for a National Call-In Day to support comprehensive sex education!
*This blog was written by Carly Groff, Advocacy Intern
Funding our Future is a campaign to pass a progressive federal budget for 2010 and ensure that our nation.s key economic choices invest in our education, spark reform of our health care system, and address climate change through cap and trade and clean energy investments. Click here for more info.
A man at the Bachmann protest yesterday holds this sign –which doesn’t even make any sense.
One year ago, my generation -adults ages 18-34 – saturated the voting polls across the country, casting their votes in record numbers with hope that things could change.
If Michael Myers and other Halloween-related phenomenon (like 
As I mentioned in a 
The push for health care reform is moving fast and furiously, so I thought it’d be helpful to have semi-daily “Health on the Hill” updates that should help you keep track of the reform debate and get to the meat of the issue. Enjoy!
should I say, the bureaucracy within our democratic Congress, has made this answer 