42,000 Letters to Congress
This is what it looks like when just some of the 42,000 letters that Working America and union members wrote to their members of Congress about health care reform are piled together.
What did they say? The AFL-CIO blog has some excerpts:
Margaret from Newark, Del., doesn’t mince words in her letter to Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.), who voted against a public option in the Senate Finance Committee last week:
Health care is too expensive. Some of us have no health insurance or Medicare. Fix the health care bill now. It should include a strong public option and ensure that employers provide coverage to their employees or pay into a pot.
Cathy from Newark, Del., tells Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.):
I am without health care at this time and can’t afford my meds. I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and uncontrolled diabetes. If this bill passes, I will get access to the medicine I need to save my life. Please support a strong public option.
Jonathan from Maple Falls, Wyo., tells Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Wyo.), who supports taxing health care premiums—and who voted against a public option—that he is opposed to having his health care benefits taxed.
I am the sole source of income for a family of five, and, quite frankly, this proposed tax would cut into my grocery and housing money….I have a family of five, a 30-year mortgage, car, insurance costs, etc. You do the math!
Pamela from Omaha writes to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) that she recently had appendix surgery and her health care provider
only covered $50 out of $17,672. I am a production employee…and have been paying into my health plan for over two years and feel this is completely ludicrous.
Gail in Augusta, Maine, tells Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) that as a school nurse, she sees
just how many moms and dads are working two and three jobs just to pay for food, let alone health. So by necessity, I am their primary care provider. This needs to be addressed for the children as well as the parents, who are without health. In this age, with health care issues on the rise, we need your support for a public option.
Tags: health care reform
I am on Medicare but no doctor in the city I live in will take new medicare patients because the payments are too low. I am finding it difficult to get accurate information about what the various reforms will do. Recently, I received an email from group called Patient Action Advocacy asking me to call my Senators and urge them to support S. 1776. From researching S. 1776 online I discovered S. 1776 is an amendment sponsored by the AMA, requesting cloture so a vote can be taken on S. 1776, the “Medicare Physicians Fairness Act” introduced by Senator Debbie Stabenow. The method of determining physician payment is controlled by the sustainabble growth rate (SGR) formula that sets annual updates for Medicare physician payments.The amendment is an underhanded method of altering the SGR by setting future updates at zero and eliminating the accumulated debt from past manipulations through an accounting change. “Additional payment policy will be included as part of health system reform or other legislation.” However, there is nothing in either the HELP Committee or in the Finance Committee addressing Medicare reform and I am unaware of any legislation to reform Medicare on the horizon. If I understand the Amendment, it will allow physicians larger payments without budgeting $’s to fix the problem.
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