Speaker Nancy Pelosi
November 6, 2009
Press Release
Pelosi Statement on Congressman Anthony Weiner’s Single Payer Alternative
Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement today on Congressman Anthony Weiner’s single payer alternative:
"Within the next few days, the House will vote on the most comprehensive health care legislation in our history. Our bill will provide affordability to the middle class, security to our seniors, and responsibility to our children by not adding a dime to the deficit. While our bill contains unprecedented reforms, including an end to discrimination for pre-existing conditions and a prohibition on raising rates or dropping coverage if you become ill, our bill cannot include provisions some strongly advocated. The single payer alternative is one of those provisions that could not be included in H.R. 3962, but which has generated support within the Congress and throughout the country.
"Congressman Anthony Weiner has been a forceful and articulate advocate for the single payer approach and our legislation. His decision not to offer a single payer amendment during consideration of H.R. 3962 is a correct one, and helps advance the passage of important health reforms by this Congress. While single payer, like other popular proposals, is not included in the consensus bill we will vote on this week, Congressman Weiner has been a tireless and effective advocate for progress on health care, and his work has been a vital part of achieving health care reform."
Committee on Energy and Commerce
Chairman Henry A. Waxman
November 6, 2009
Chairman Waxman's Statement on Rep. Weiner's Single-Payer Amendment
Today Chairman Henry A. Waxman released a statement in response to Rep. Anthony Weiner's decision not to offer a single-payer amendment to the House Democratic health care legislation.
"Rep. Anthony Weiner has been one of the most tireless and effective advocates for health care reform. His decision not to offer his amendment on the floor was a difficult one for him, and for supporters of the measure. I believe Rep. Weiner's choice will be enormously helpful in passing the health care reform package. His step is a correct and courageous one. I thank Rep. Weiner for it, and look forward to working with him closely. Rep. Weiner deserves a great deal of credit for helping to make quality, affordable health care more available to millions of Americans."
Comment by Ida Hellander, M.D., Executive Director, Physicians for a National Health Program:
Next steps and interpretation -
1) The fact that single payer got so far along in the House is a testament to the strength of our single payer movement. The huge number of calls by single payer advocates in support of single payer and the Weiner amendment in recent days have been noted by several members of Congress.
2) It appears that nobody, particularly the President, expected our single payer option to be alive in the Congress for so long. As you know, they attempted to keep it "off the table" from the very beginning.
3) The President was directly involved in the decision to not hold a vote on the Weiner single payer amendment, and Weiner will be meeting with him later today. Stay tuned.
4) We need to increase pressure on the Congress and the White House for Medicare for All through lobbying, civil disobedience, media outreach, and grassroots organizing. Sen. Sanders will call for a vote on single payer in the Senate - this could come up anytime in the next month. Encourage your Senator to support the Sanders bill and also an amendment he will offer for a state single payer option. The California Nurses Association/NNOC has already started lobbying visits in the Senate in D.C.
5) We have been asked how to tell members to vote on the House bill. Our response is that the bill is "like aspirin for breast cancer."
Note from David Swanson and Action Items below...
ACTION NEEDED TODAY: Democratic House leaders can insert what is called a "Manager’s Amendment" into legislation, even when it is closed to any other amendments. The managers are the majority and minority members who "manage" debate for the bill on each side.
Today, tomorrow, and beyond, we need to call these "managers" and insist that the Kucinich Amendment is restored into the healthcare bill.
The "gang" that holds our future in their hands - the people you need to call NOW - are:
* Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
- Washington, DC, office (202) 225-4965;
- San Francisco office (415) 556-4862
* Majority Leader Steny Hoyer:
- Washington, DC, office Phone - (202) 225-4131 - Fax - (202) 225-4300
- Greenbelt office (301) 474-0119;
- Waldorf office (301) 843-1577
* Rep. Henry Waxman:
- Washington, DC, office (202) 225-3976;
- Los Angeles office (323) 651-1040
* Rep. Charles Rangel:
- Washington, DC, office (202) 225-4365;
- New York office (212) 663-3900
* Rep. George Miller:
- Washington, DC, office (202) 225-2095;
- Concord office (925) 602-1880;
- Richmond office (510) 262-6500;
- Vallejo office (707) 645-1888
NOTE: When talking to Waxman and Pelosi's offices be sure to also tell them you want the vote on the Weiner Amendment she and Waxman promised on July 31st - We also need and have a right to see the CBO scoring on the Weiner Amendment.
The first big fight over the Senate Finance Committee’s health care legislation erupted Tuesday night: a rollicking brawl over a deal that the Obama administration cut with the pharmaceutical industry to achieve $80 billion in savings on drug costs over 10 years, money that would help pay for the legislation.
Top House Democrats have hated the deal from the get-go. Senate Democrats are now bitterly divided. And Senate Republicans are eagerly jumping into the fray to needle the Democrats over their divisions. The fight over the deal with PhRMA actually stems from the legislative battle over the Medicare prescription drug legislation that Republicans successfully pushed through Congress in 2003. As a result of that legislation, about 6 million elderly Americans who had been receiving drug benefits under Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, were instead shifted into the new Medicare drug program, resulting in the government paying far high prices for drugs.
Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, and now the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has long complained about that switch. And the House health care legislation, of which Mr. Waxman is a main author, seeks to reverse the arrangement and to recoup the extra money that the government has been spending by restoring the old Medicaid drug discounts or “rebates” as they are known.
That would save the government at least $86 billion over 10 years, but would potentially cost the drug industry far more. The White House has said that its deal with PhRMA would help narrow a gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs that is know as the doughnut hole, which forces people to pay some of their drug costs after a certain level. But there are also questions about the extent to which the drug industry also benefits, because the increased drug coverage for seniors means that the government will pay for more medication on their behalf, particularly brand-name drugs. In some cases, seniors now stop taking medication or switch to generics when they reach the doughnut hole.
Since the White House reached its deal with PhRMA in June there has been some disagreement between the industry and the administration over the precise terms of the arrangement. PhRMA has insisted that the White House agreed not to seek any additional concessions from drug manufacturers and to block Mr. Waxman’s plan in the House legislation. And the industry said that its support of the health overhaul was specifically aimed at Mr. Baucus’s proposal.
Mr. Baucus had previously announced that the first votes on amendments would not take place until Wednesday, so a final outcome of the fight was postponed. Read it all at NYTimes.com
By the time Congress returns from its recess and takes another whack at the health insurance mess, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., will have started revealing the deceit that protects health business profiteers.
Waxman has already begun by demanding that major insurance companies reveal how much they pay top executives and board members and, most important, the size of their profits from selling policies.
He is getting to the heart of the health insurance debate. It’s all about the health business—insurance, hospitals, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, medical equipment makers and others. Read it all at Truthdig
The insurance industry is facing new heat from House Democrats as Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Domestic Policy, on Wednesday requested that six top insurance company executives appear before his panel to explain how they do business.
Kucinich in his letter said the Sept. 17 hearing will examine “the nature, cost/benefit, and impact of administrative measures and protocols used by the health insurance industry to determine coverage for doctor-prescribed health care treatments, as well as costs of administrative measures undertaken by doctors to interface with insurance companies.”
The missive went to CEOs of Aetna, WellPoint, Cigna, Humana, Hemingway Health Care and UnitedHealth. It follows a request earlier this month that Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of that panel’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sent to 52 insurance companies requesting reams of potentially embarrassing financial information. Waxman and Stupak are seeking details of executive compensation packages, conferences and retreats they sponsored, and the profitability of their products. Read it all at Roll Call
However, I think Waxman is getting a little tired with Rahm's attempts to sideline the work of the Commerce Committee.
Because on Monday he sent out a demand for information on health insurance company's exorbitant costs--returnable in time for the health care debate in Congress in September.
He's asking for the following by September 4:
* A table listing the total compensation for every employee making more than $500,000 a year
* A table listing board member compensation
* A table listing off-site conferences and retreats
* A table listing the company's total revenue and net income
And the following by September 14:
* Communication with the board on compensation packages
* Tables listing premium revenue, claims payments, and sales expenses
And here's the list of insurance companies mean old Henry is picking on. In case you wondering, Mrs. Bayh's company, Wellpoint, is on that list. I would imagine that after these details become public--just as the debate between the House and Senate picks up--Evan Bayh might think a little differently about how he represents the interests of--as Mrs. Greenspan calls them--the conservative Democrats in Indiana. Likewise, once Waxman has the details of the retreats that some of those obstructing reform have attended, it may change their commitment to obstruction pretty quickly. Read it all here.
Faced with continued opposition from conservative Democrats on his House Committee on Energy and Commerce, committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., today threatened to take his own committee out of the process of crafting a final health care reform bill for a vote in the House of Representatives, angering members of the Blue Dog (Democratic) Coalition. A week after two other House committees passed the bill that Waxman had negotiated with Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the Ways and Means committee, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the Education and Labor committee, the Blue Dogs continued to hold up passage of a bill in Energy and Commerce, citing 10 provisions with which they took issue. So Waxman threatened to take his committee out of the bill-crafting process altogether, so that the House could move forward to vote on the bill as already passed in the other two committees.
It's a brilliant tactical move, and one that few committee chairmen would dare to take -- to win by threatenting to render one's own committee irrelevant to the process. But Waxman clearly saw the Blue Dogs as being in league with Republicans who are looking to scuttle health care reform altogether. "I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans," Waxman said, according to Ian Swanson and Mike Soraghan of The Hill. "I don’t see what other alternative we have, because we're not going to let them empower Republicans on the committee." Read it all at AlterNet
Conyers spoke last night on Capitol Hill at a dinner in honor of outgoing Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.
“There are three committees that have been designated to work on (health care) on the House side,” Conyers said. “[They are headed by] three dear buddies of mine – Charlie Rangel, Henry Waxman and George Miller. Guess what? All of them were on single payer (HR 676).”
“Guess what? All of them got off except for George Miller of California. Not only did he not get off, he said — you want a hearing, you got a hearing.”
“It’s one thing to go down in defeat, which I don’t plan to do by the way,” Conyers said. “But it’s another thing to say – we don’t want to hear the most popular bill. I’ve got 79 co-sponsors. Seventy-nine men and women saying – let’s get this thing on. We’ve got 300 to 400 unions. We’ve had three polls. The American people have spoken.”
“And here I am in the most Democratically controlled legislature in my life. And they are saying – it’s kind of too late because we have to get this thing through by the end of July. And we don’t have time.”
“Hey look – I’ve worked on this too damn long to let anybody – I’m going to every Committee not just Miller’s. Charlie Rangel – get ready for your pal to come to your Committee.”
“Henry Waxman, my brilliant friend, open up your door. And then if you want to try to pull something that’s okay. But to tell me it’s too late – I’ve got news for you. That means you really didn’t know me all of these years.”
“We’re going to have HR 676 heard in every committee of the House of Representatives or my name ain’t John Conyers.”
“I don’t mind losing a debate or losing the vote, but Jesus Christ don’t tell me that my proposal is off the table before we start, without even a hearing,” Conyers said.
“What kind of a Democratic congress is this?” he asked.
Conyers also gave the back of his hand to President Obama.
“I’ve finally persuaded my favorite president in life to – not put single payer on the table – but to at least let me in the room,” Conyers said. “That was a great complement I suppose.”
“How are you going to have a transformational health care program that has been vaunted and touted for so long if you take the most popular remedy for it off the table to begin the negotiations?” Conyers asked. “You won’t get it.”
“The reason is elementary Dear Watson,” Conyers said. “The corporate health care people, the insurance people don’t want to leave the room. And they are not leaving the room. And as long as they are there, you are going to have some sad version of the same crap you were supposed to be fixing in the first place.”
(Listen to audio of Conyers’ remarks here. - mp3)
More at Single Payer Action
|
