NEWS CLIPS ON JUNE 25
THE HILL (http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/unions-demand-public-plan-in-healthcare-bill-2009-06-25.html)
Unions demand public
plan in healthcare bill
By
Jeffery Young, 06/25/09;
A
horde of union members gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday demanding that a
government-backed insurance program be included in healthcare reform
legislation.
At a rally fronted by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard
Dean, representatives from liberal groups and organized labor said a bill that
does not include a public insurance plan would not be true reform. “Healthcare without a quality public plan
option to lower costs is totally unacceptable,” said Arlene Holt Baker,
executive vice president of the AFL-CIO.
The
rally comes amid growing doubts over whether a public plan will be included in
legislation. Though House Democrats
included a public plan option in their bill, prospects in a key committee
appear close to nil.
Senate
Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) issued a statement Thursday
touting progress on a bipartisan deal.
With Republicans united against the public option that bodes poorly for
liberal interests.
In
recent weeks, liberal groups such as Health Care for America Now and MoveOn.org
have been targeting individual Democrats who either oppose or are wavering on
the public option, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Mary Landrieu (La.)
and Kay Hagan (N.C.) and Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.).
Labor
unions favoring the public plan on Thursday laid the pressure on Democrats,
reminding them that labor pulled out all the stops to help get Obama elected
last year, something union-friendly lawmakers said they recognized.
“We
would not be here saying the words ‘Barack Obama, president of the United
States’ if it weren’t for you, so thank you,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner
(D-N.Y.). “We would not be in a position
to be considering healthcare today if it were not for you, so thank you.”
Some
Democrats are clearly worried about losing the support of the left for
healthcare reform and are asking liberals not to draw lines in the sand.
“It’s
too early, and I’m begging all of my colleagues, if you feel as strongly as I
do about some of these issues, withhold that absolute statement that ‘I cannot
vote for a bill that doesn’t include X or does include X,’ ” said Senate
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
The
star of the show Thursday was Dean, the former Vermont governor, who took the
stage to raucous cheers. Dean fired a
shot across the bow to Democratic lawmakers not committed to including the
public option as part of healthcare reform.
“We are here; we’re not going away.
We voted for change a few months ago.
We expect change. And if we don’t
get it, there’s going to be more change,” said Dean. Success on healthcare reform is a must for
Democrats, Dean told The Hill. “I think
it’s going to be a catastrophic problem for the Democratic Party if they can’t
get this bill out.” Obama has stayed
true to unions’ positions on two important issues in healthcare reform. In addition to continuing to defend the
public option, Obama is resisting congressional interest in taxing workplace
health benefits. Liberals do not have
the stomach for concessions, Dean said.
“The public option is the compromise position,” he said. “That’s going to be the difference between
real reform and a bill that doesn’t do anything.”
A
number of Democrats who support the public option urged the crowd to pressure
their colleagues to get on board with the public plan. “We’re counting on you to go across the
street and convince and persuade and cajole and do whatever you need to do to get
a strong public option so we get real healthcare reform,” said Sen. Sherrod
Brown (D-Ohio).
Advocates
of the public option have significant support in Congress. Besides the House bill, the Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is drafting legislation that will
include a public option, confirmed Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who is filling in
as chairman in the absence of ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).
“I’m for a public option,” Dodd told The Hill.
“Hopefully we’ll come out with a good, strong one.”
Speaking
at a smaller event after the labor union rally, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.)
tried to dial down expectations for the Senate bill. “We may be in a situation where — and I think
it’s likely — where the public health plan … is not the way I would like it
when it comes out of Finance,” said Stabenow, who is a member of the committee
but is not part of Baucus’s core group of negotiators. “Don’t assume that this
is the final product,” Stabenow said.
“What we need for you to do is stick with us.”
J. Taylor Rushing and Kiera McCaffrey
contributed to this article
POLITICO (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24203.html)
Big Capitol Hill rally for healthcare
By Alex Isenstadt 6/25/0
Thousands of grassroots activists and labor workers from across the country
flooded Capitol Hill Thursday for a high-volume rally for health care reform.
The rally came as President Barack Obama’s plan encounters its toughest
resistance on Capitol Hill yet. Republicans are mounting stiff opposition to a
public option, and members of both parties have sticker shock over the
projected costs of reform.
Supporters vowed Thursday not to back down.“We want health care reform,”
told Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) supporters, gathered at Russell Park across
the street from the Capitol. “We aren’t going to wait another 150 years. We’re
going to do it now.”
“ It is about time the
greatest country in the world has the greatest healthcare in the world”,
Schumer added.
Health Care for America Now, an organization that is mounting an aggressive public lobbying effort in support the president’s plan, organized the event.
But at the rally,
there were reminders that the health care reform effort has its detractors.
While Schumer spoke, one protester grabbed a bullhorn and yelled his support
for a single-payer health care option – nearly drowning out Schumer.
AFSCME President Gerry McEntee and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) urged
supporters to lobby their members of Congress to support a reform bill – and
told them not to let well-funded health industry opponents bring the effort to
a halt. “Let it be known that our opposition will fight hard, they will fight
dirty, they will outspend us,” said McEntee.
“The private health care industry will not hijack this
process,” Brown said. “We’re counting on you … to persuade, to cajole, to do
whatever you do to get a public option.”
(http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1153ap_us_people_falco.html)
Falco urges health care overhaul at Capitol rally
By Ann Sanner, Associated Press writer 6/25/09
Washington –
Award-winning actress Edie Falco, cable
television’s no-nonsense "Nurse Jackie," delivered a stern
message to lawmakers Thursday: fix health care.
"I'm here because I've traveled through the health care system and
there are some holes," Falco, a breast cancer survivor, told a Capitol
Hill rally for health care overhaul.
"I'm here because I care about the people in this country and I
know that we can do better, that we must do better."
Falco, who stars
in the Showtime series "Nurse Jackie, said she went without health care
coverage for many years. Nearly 50
million Americans are without coverage and President Barack Obama's goal is to
provide health benefits for all.
"I work in a business where they take great
care of you if you are working," Falco told a crowd of several hundred at
the rally. "It's bad enough the emotional impact of not having a
job," she said. "But to get sick
on top of that, and worry every day that your symptoms are not getting better,
figuring out what you're gonna have to do without so you can afford a doctor's
visit - I am far more familiar with that than I am with my situation these last
number of years.”
Before taking on
the role of a New York City nurse, Falco was nominated for a best actress Emmy
six times for her role as mob wife Carmela Soprano in HBO's "The Sopranos.”
She won three times.
Lawmakers have
been working on legislation to control the costs of health care while expanding
coverage.
Falco, labor leaders and other supporters of
Obama's effort appeared at the afternoon rally on behalf of Health Care for
America Now. The organization has
launched $1.1 million in television ads in 10 states supporting Democrats'
health efforts.
THE MORNING CALL
(http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-a6_5health.6941723jun26,0,3135367.story)
Health care reformists rally
'We can't wait,' they say -- while opponents worry
about unaffordable solutions.”
Hundreds of Pennsylvania
activists -- including two busloads from the Lehigh Valley area -- joined in a
rally for health care reform in front of the Capitol on Thursday, entering a
fight that has some in Congress battling over how much of an overhaul the
country can afford.
One by one, speakers told
stories about how the country's health care system had let them down and urged
lawmakers to act quickly to reduce costs and ensure coverage for every
American, as President Barack Obama wants.
''We can't wait,'' Maureen
Kurtek of Minersville, Schuylkill County, told a crowd of thousands next to the
Capitol, detailing how she lost six fingertips and half of her foot after her
insurance company balked at covering an expensive therapy she needs to fight
lupus.
The
rally comes as lawmakers haggle over the details of health care legislation
that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged would come to the floor by the end of
July. With a prospective price tag above $1 trillion, and Americans
increasingly concerned about the ballooning federal deficit, that timeline now
seems overly optimistic.
WASHINGTON WIRE (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/06/25/10924/)
Health Care Advocates Rally on Capitol Hill
Melanie Trottman reports on labor, June 25, 2009
Thousands of
union members and other advocates of overhauling the health care system rallied
on Capitol Hill today to demand high quality, affordable health care for all —
this year.
From union
officials and doctors to patients and Democratic lawmakers, dozens of people
took to the stage one-by-one repeating the mantra, “We need health-care reform in
2009 and we can’t wait.”
Anna Burger,
secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, turned red
and her voice crescendoed as she made an impassioned plea. Burger, flanked by people wearing T-shirts
with their respective organizations’ names, said the nation’s economic crisis
makes it clear that “now is the time to act.”
Nurses and doctors, she said, want to be good health care providers but need patients with solid health care coverage. “We need a public health care option,” Burger yelled into the microphone. The backdrop was the Capitol and a giant red, white and blue poster bearing the name Health Care for America Now!, the coalition group that sponsored the 90- minute rally and subsequent lobbying visits to members of Congress. The group’s steering committee includes Acorn, the AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, Communications Workers of America, SEIU, and UAW and others.
Actress Edie Falco, Carmela on HBO’s The Sopranos, moderated part of the event.
(To read more about public and private
health care proposals, click HERE.)
Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, told the crowd that he’d just left a health insurance markup session on the hill, and instructed them: “Go across the street and convince, persuade and cajole” lawmakers to get “a strong public option and real health care reform.” His takeaway tip for the crowd: “Reform is about keeping what works and
fixing what’s broken.”
Brown and others
also took jabs at the insurance industry.
“The insurance industry says the government can’t run anything, so explain
to me why insurance companies are afraid that the public option is going to put
them out of businesses.”
Valerie Arkoosh, a physician and
president-elect for the National Physicians Alliance, told the crowd that the
choice of a public insurance option will “help keep insurance companies
honest.”
(http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200906250736)
200 West Virginians attend
national health rally in D.C.
By Paul J. Nyden, Staff writer, June 25,
2009
CHARLESTON,
W.Va. -- Two hundred West Virginians were among 12,000 people holding a rally
backing health-care reform in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Gary Zuckett,
director of the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, said everyone gathered in a
park beside the Everett Dirksen Senate Office Building, near the national
Capitol.
Howard
Dean, a physician and former Vermont governor who unsuccessfully ran for
president in the 2004 Democratic primary, spoke to the crowd. “We then met with Senator Rockefeller,"
Zuckett said. "We had a lot of
union people with us.” We had 150 people
at our town hall meeting with Rockefeller in the Senate office building. We thanked him for introducing the
health-care reform bill in the Senate."
Rockefeller
then met privately with West Virginia AFL-CIO leaders Larry Matheney and Kenney Perdue, as
well as Elaine Harris from the Communication Workers of America. "We filled the whole Senate Park,"
Zuckett said. "We had 7,500 lunch
boxes delivered to the rally. But they ran
out quickly."
Sam
Hickman, director of the West Virginia chapter of the National Association of
Social Workers; and Rick Wilson, a state leader of the American Friends Service
Committee and Economic Justice Project, also traveled by bus from Charleston to
Washington. Hickman said,
"Rockefeller is very strongly in favor of a public option for health care
and is really sticking to that position..."So many people were vilifying
that public option, it was almost off the table. Rockefeller brought it back as a viable
alternative," Hickman said.
Letters supporting Thursday's
rally also came from Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and Reps. Nick J. Rahall and
Alan Mollohan, both D-W.Va.