Health Care Reform

[kelly38]

In early October the Senate Finance Committee became the last of the five Congressional committees with jurisdiction over health care reform legislation to report out the legislation. The Senate Finance Committee's vote marked a milestone as the legislation gained the first Republican supporter, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine. Under the auspices of Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV), Senator Baucus (D-MT), the chairman of the Finance Committee, will sit down with Senator Dodd from the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee to negotiate a merger of the bills passed out of their respective committees. Once the merger is complete, the legislation will move to the Senate floor for debate and a vote. On the House side, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is continuing her work to merge legislation approved by three House committees. The merging of the bills in both the Senate and House is an extremely important part of health care reform.

Please take action and contact your Members of Congress to deliver a very important message!

We need to ensure passage of affordable and high-quality healthcare for all Americans. This means that we must urge Members of Congress to include rapid implementation of the following insurance market reforms in the merged bills:


• Elimination of preexisting condition exclusions and waiting periods;
• Elimination of annual and lifetime limits on coverage;
• Caps on out-of-pocket spending.
*Support a public option


It is estimated that 122 people in the U.S. die every day, just because they do not have health insurance.

You can help by contacting your two U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative to share this message with them.

http://www.house.gov/Welcome.shtml

or

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/index.html

The above link can find your representatives by inserting your zip code

Below is another good link to get contact information for your state Senators.

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

[kelly38]

They will be doing a head count this week to see if they have the votes to pass.

If you have a Democratic Congressmen or Senator that has not come out to support health care reform, including a public option, please write to them and ask for their support. Reminding them that will be the determining factor for your vote during re-election time couldn't hurt.

I have given up on the Republican leaders to support any true Health care reform. The insurance industry has total control of them...and it has been spreading to some of our Democratic leaders as well.

[kelly38]

Hr3962

http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/1...lth-care.shtml

10 page bill summary

http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/1...ARY-102909.pdf


If you do want to support this bill I would send letters via e-mail, as the vote should be tomorrow.

[kelly38]

Sample letter below. And this is the contact information to fins your local representatives. http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml#ca


November 6, 2009

[recipient address inserted here]


Dear [recipient name inserted here],


As your constituent and as a strong supporter of health care reform, I am writing to urge you to vote yes on HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR 3962) will protect patients and expand access to care by completely eliminating preexisting condition exclusions, capping out-of-pocket spending for all patients, and eliminating annual and lifetime limits on coverage.

This legislation will help millions of Americans gain and/or maintain their health insurance coverage and protect individuals from medical bankruptcy. In addition, the bill satisfies the President's commitment that health care reform must be fully paid for.

I strongly urge you to support this historic legislation that places the needs of patients first!


Sincerely,

[kelly38]

Update...

The bill was passed in the house and is now returned to the Senate.

If you want to continue to support this reform, I recommend writing your states Senators.

[disappearingboy]

My problem with this is that the last I heard, the insurance industry STILL has way too much say-so in how/when/why health care is doled out. If that's true for *general* coverage, you can bet the WC system isn't going to be any better off.

[kelly38]

Quoting disappearingboy

My problem with this is that the last I heard, the insurance industry STILL has way too much say-so in how/when/why health care is doled out. If that's true for *general* coverage, you can bet the WC system isn't going to be any better off.

True disappearingboy.

However, this bill does help those who cannot get insurance due to pre-existing conditions, limits the amount you have to pay out of pocket, puts caps on this (people lose their homes and life savings due to their out of pocket expenses, with insurance coverage). This bill also has a public option, similar, but not exactly like medicare. It also will put a stop to the insurance companies who drop people when they do come down with an illness like cancer.

Approx 122 people die in the U. S. everyday just because they do not have health insurance.

This is a moral issue for me. I believe we as a society should help those less fortunate.

One of the number one causes a person falls behind the poverty level in our country is illness or injury. Reading stories on this site on how an injured worker's injury has caused them to lose their car and home is an example of this.

I would also hope that injured workers would support health care reform because as an injured worker, you now have a pre-existing condition.

[kelly38]

They are attempting to drop the public option from this bill, and instead drop the Medicare eligibility age to 55. That is nice...but what about the people who are under 55?


This bill seems to change every week, and does.


This health care reform bill needs to keep the public option.

[disappearingboy]

One thing that can be said for health care reform, and especially if we had a medical system similar to Canada or the UK, is it will weed out the money hungry docs from those who went into medicine because they LOVE medicine and aren't in it just for the money.

Let the greedy docs who went to med school so they could one day drive a sports car, get weeded out. Let the docs who'd rather be on a golf course, paid for by pharmacutical salesmen, get weeded out. And let the docs who cater to insurance company's get weeded out as well. Maybe then we'll have the right people practicing medicine

[kelly38]

I no longer support Hr3962 the "health care reform bill" in its current form. The things I listed above have been taken out of the bill, or distorted to only the advantage of the insurance industry.

This bill started off with good intentions, however the insurance industry has bought and paid for many of our Senators, such as Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman.

The public option has been taken out. Many Americans who cannot afford to pay for insurance will be forced to buy it. People with pre-existing conditions will be able to buy insurance, however they can be charged double. This is not health care reform.