A new study by Representative Anthony Weiner (D – Queens & Brooklyn), member of the Health Subcommittee and Co-Chair of the Caucus on the Middle Class, revealed that 151 members of the House and Senate currently receive government-funded; government-administered single-payer health care - Medicare.
On the list of recipients are 55 Republicans who have steadfastly opposed other Americans getting the public option, like the one they have chosen.
Weiner said, "Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize. They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else."
The list of congressional recipients of Medicare who also oppose the public option is below:
Senators who are negotiating how to overhaul the nation's health care system broke off formal talks Thursday until after the July Fourth holiday, saying that they lack consensus on how to pay for the $1 trillion or more that the changes could cost over the next decade.
Thousands of their constituents rallied outside the Capitol to show their support for change, and the Obama administration called for action.
At the end of the day, however, three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, which determines funding — who had been seeking common ground for days — issued a three-sentence statement saying that while the issues are "difficult and complex," they have made "progress toward workable solutions."
Since May 20 seven more US Representatives have signed on to HR 676, national single payer health care sponsored by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), bringing the total, including Conyers, to 83.
Congressman Conyers was able to get the first official single payer congressional hearing in decades. It took place in a House subcommittee on June 10, 2009.
The witnesses included Congressman Conyers, Chair of the Judiciary Committee and chief sponsor of HR 676; Marcia Angell MD, former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine; Walter Tsou MD, National Board Advisor of PNHP; and Geri Jenkins, Co-President of the CNA/NNOC, plus David Gratzer of The Manhattan Institute who testified against single payer.
Don't miss the questioning by Representatives Phil Hare and Dennis Kucinich.
Congressman Conyers is requesting that there be single payer hearings in every House committee with jurisdiction over health care prior to deciding on health care reform so that the most popular plan can be fully heard and considered.
Call or fax Committee Chairmen Rangel and Waxman to urge them to hold hearings on single payer health care. If your congressperson is on either committee, you can encourage him or her to speak to the Chairmen in favor of single payer hearings.
No wonder single payer was off the table from the start...
Almost 30 key lawmakers helping draft landmark health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments in a sector that could be dramatically reshaped by this summer's debate.
The list of members who have personal investments in the corporations that will be affected by the legislation -- which President Obama has called this year's highest domestic priority -- includes Congress's most powerful leaders and a bipartisan collection of lawmakers in key committee posts. Their total health-care holdings could be worth $27 million, because congressional financial disclosure forms released yesterday require reporting of only broad ranges of holdings rather than precise values of assets.
While no congressional rules bar members from holding financial stakes in industries they regulate, some ethics experts suggest that it often creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, particularly if there is a chance that the legislation could result in a personal financial boost.
"If someone is going to be substantially enriched by the consequences of the vote, particularly if it represents a meaningful amount of their net worth, then there is a problem," said Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University. "This is such important legislation that you don't want to be tainted by any conflict."
But many legal experts say the health-care industry is so predominant that it is impossible for lawmakers to avoid financial ties to that sector, suggesting that the best antidote is a clear disclosure system that makes every lawmaker's finances publicly available. Robert L. Walker, a Washington lawyer and former House and Senate ethics counsel, said that in many cases, members of Congress are "simply one of perhaps thousands or more" investors in a single corporation and such investments are not "prohibitive conflicts."
The House will release healthcare legislation very soon, and the draft bill could even come out next week. From there the bill will go to Energy and Commerce, Education and Labor, and the Ways and Means committees for debate.
We need you to call, fax, or visit four Congresssperson’s offices ASAP to make sure that single-payer healthcare is included in these discussions.
FIRST - Ask Your Rep. to Attend the Healthcare Financing Briefing
The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care is holding a briefing titled, "How Do We Pay For It? Options for Financing Expanded Health Care."
Call your representative and ask him/her to attend. If you know your representative, call 866-338-1015 for the Capital Switchboard. If not, visit votesmart.org to find out.
Here’s the information: 1:00 PM, June 10, 2009 2237 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC
SECOND - Ask Two Chairmen to Hold Single-Payer Hearings Please call the chairmen of these committees and tell them that: “Because the majority of Americans, doctors, and nurses support a single-payer healthcare system, I hope to see a robust debate on single-payer healthcare–with single-payer advocates as witnesses. Please follow Rep. George Miller’s lead and hold hearings on single-payer healthcare in your committee.”
Call or fax the Committee Chairmen here: Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman Phone: 202-225-3976 - Fax: 202-225-4099
Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Charles Rangel Phone: 202-225-4365 - Fax: 202-225-0816
Sen. Ted Kennedy (MA) is holding a hearing on healthcare reform this Thursday, June 11th, at 3pm in Senate HELP Committee. Please call or fax him asking him to include single-payer advocates in this important hearing.
Sen. Ted Kennedy Phone: 202-224-4543 - Fax: 202-224-2417 - Email: here
The Senate Finance Committee, led by Sen. Max Baucus, is holding important roundtable discussions on health care on May 5 and May 14. The list of witnesses includes Blue Cross Blue Shield and the private insurance lobby group America's Health Insurance Plans but not one single-payer supporter.
We need to tell Congress that this is unacceptable.
Congress is writing health care reform as we sit here and preach to the choir. It's time to stop preaching to the choir. It's time to get the Mike Farrell ads on TV. Now. Not in a month.
Donate today and help raise the $50,000.00 we need. If everyone donates 50 dollars, we can do it. If everyone donates 100 dollars, we can do it faster.
Most industrialized nations in the OECD, along with Taiwan, seek to operate their health systems on the Principle of Social Solidarity. It means to them that health care is to be viewed as a so-called “social good,” like elementary and secondary education in the United States. That perspective, in turn, implies that the financial burden of health care for the nation as a whole should be allocated to individual members of society roughly in accordance with the individual’s ability to pay, and that needed health care should be available to all members of society on toughly equal terms.
If the health system is to operated subject to this distributive social ethic, it requires that government either operate the financing, risk-pooling and purchasing functions directly (as is the case in Canada, Taiwan and the UK, for example) or that government tightly regulate all three functions, even if they are actually performed by private institutions outside of government proper (as is the case in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland).
Unfortunately, the United States never has been able to evolve a widely shared consensus on the distributive social ethic that ought to govern the U.S. health system. The bewildering American health system reflects that lack of consensus.
A much mouthed mantra in our debate on health policy is that “we all want the same thing in health care, but merely quibble over the means to get there.” Nothing could be further from the truth. That debate has been and continues to be a tenacious ideological fight over the social ethic that ought to govern American health care; but we camouflage it as a technical debate strictly over means.
My plea before this Committee and to the Congress is that any health reform proposal put before the American people be preceded with a preamble that clearly articulates the social goals our health system is supposed to pursue and the social ethic it is to observe. Policy makers in other nations routinely do so and accept the constraints that this preamble imposes on their design of health reform. It would be helpful to have a clearly articulated statement on the social ethics for American health care as well.
WASHINGTON, DC- U.S. Representative Eric Massa of New York said this week that in the 86 days since he took office, he has received many letters from his constituents. Some are general letters supporting him or proposed legislation; some letters express disagreement with some of what Congress is working on. Other letters begin with the phrase, 'Help me, or I might lose my house,' Massa said. But at least once every other day, Congressman Massa reads the words, 'Help me or I will die,' as a constituent from his great state falls through the gaping holes in the healthcare system we have today.
Thirty-five letters in 86 days.
"Help me or I will die," we write to them in ever increasing numbers. Help me, we beg. And while Massa said he doesn't know how any Congressional member goes to sleep at night without thinking about these letters he knows all of his colleagues must get too, we know that many don't yet know what our reality looks like or certainly what it feels like. Or worse, they still just don't care.
Healthcare reform is a priority, they tell us. Health insurance mandates. Buy the product, they say, and you'll be OK. Buying insurance will mean everyone has healthcare, they seem to be trying to say. Yet over the course of more than half a century, more and more Americans are dying in a system more and more controlled by corporate greed.
"Help me or I will die," we keep writing. We keep pleading.
Some Congressional members are fighting for a different sort of system. They are fighting for a publicly financed, privately delivered system. But their fight is being squelched by those advocating for our forced participation - through mandates - in an expansion of the health insurance profiteering that has killed so many of our citizens already. And as the push for mandates deepens, the insurance CEOs will grow ever more fond of the members of Congress who will build their customer bases exponentially - and fatten their salaries and bonuses at exactly the same time 14,000 regular Jane's and Joe's every single day in America are losing their employer based healthcare benefits when they lose their jobs.
"Help me or I will die," we write in the insistent drumbeat of human suffering in America that is so far answered with caucus meetings and political calculations and lots of special attention to protecting the insurance industry and its profits.
The insurance industry does not believe in the free market and competition at all. In fact, they believe in forced purchasing of their products. In recent days they have argued that they cannot accept any public plan option like a Medicare for All plan. Why? Because they could not compete with that sort of plan. So, the insurance industry argues they need the government to make sure they do not have to compete and that they can count on all of us being forced to buy their product. That's not a love of the free market at all.
Giving me the basic human right of healthcare and letting me decide where to get my care is a love of the free market. Allowing the insurance industry to dictate the terms of my life and my death is not freedom. It is tyranny. It is a sham.
"Help me or I will die," we write. And as we write, another American dies because the insurance industry decides the value of that life and its impact on the bottom line of their profits. Hundreds of thousands of times every year, the insurance industry answers that plea with a denial or a delay. A letter is sent to yet another Congressional member. The suffering goes on and on and on. But Congress fights to protect the industry, and another American dies.
This fight for the basic human right of healthcare is a tough one. Congressional members read the letters. Some, like Eric Massa, have trouble sleeping when they think about the suffering at home in their own districts because they know it could be so very different. Others can apparently rationalize their lack of action as somehow necessary or even in the best interests of a market based economy and free enterprise.
"Help me or I will die."
Work horse meetings. Stakeholder meetings. Super stakeholder meetings. Drafting committees. Orchestrated hearings with choreographed witnesses. White House summits and regional forums. Healthcare house meetings. On and on and on -- the suffering marches on while the insurance industry marches confidently to the front of the pack, ever sure of their position, ever sure of their outcome.
So who will pay for the insurance industry to beef up its profits? The same Americans writing for help and dying while waiting. And who will fund the bureaucracy set up to record the insurance mandates and the enforcement of the mandates and the collection of the mandate fines and the agencies set up to manage the flow of business to the insurance industry? You get the picture. We the people -- the Americans writing for help from their leaders.
"Help me or I will die." And the Congress keeps forgetting it is the one place where the people writing the letters are supposed to have a say in what the answers will be this democracy. The people's house of government. So we keep writing.
Now I read that some want this public plan option you're selling to us to really be just another way to buy into a private insurance pool. The "public option" as they'll try to sell it will not really be a national plan like Medicare but an employee pool for purchasing for-profit insurance plans. This Congress is inching ever closer to simply handing total control of our healthcare system over to the insurance industry. The want to manage us into thinking they give a damn.
"Help me or I will die."
So, when the next round of Congressional elections rolls around in just a little more than a year, their campaign coffers will burst with funds sent to them by the folks who will profit wildly from an health insurance industry forced government mandate that Americans buy private, for-profit health insurance. Full circle... we, the people, will have funded with the mandated premiums the re-election of those who sold us down the river and tried to tell us it was healthcare reform. Do you suppose the Republicans will love pointing out this bail out of the private insurance industry?
"Help me or I will die." It's not too late for Congress to respond with real reform, real fiscal responsibility, real honor and real courage. In fact, to respond to these pleas by simply entrenching corporate profits at the people's expense, could mean that in just a few months it may be too late for you in the ballot boxes of this nation as the plans do nothing to stem the flow of letters on Rep. Massa's desk.
Help us. Help us. Help us. We're going to keep writing and calling and voting until you do.
The Senate Finance Committee, led by Sen. Max Baucus, is holding important roundtable discussions on health care on 
