From the eMail Bag: Write a letter on health care?

I got this email today from MoveOn requesting that I write a letter to my local newspaper urging our congressional delegation to “fix” the bill and make it more progressive. I, instead, chose to urge my congress people to make the bill more passable with a common sense compromise. Please read on past the email to the letter I sent to the paper. You can follow the link and write your own if you want.

Kat Barr, MoveOn.org Political Action wrote:

Write a letter on health care?

From: Kat Barr, MoveOn.org Political Action [moveon-help@list.moveon.org]
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 7:31 AM
To: Tom Chambless
Subject: Write a letter on health care?

Dear MoveOn member,

Now that the Senate has passed its health care bill, negotiations have begun over what will be in the final legislation.

So we’ve got an important opportunity this week, while members of Congress are home over the holiday break, to urge them to fix the bill and make it more progressive.

With conservatives continuing to push for watered-down reform, it’s imperative that Congress hears from those of us who want them to fight for the strongest bill possible.

Members of Congress will be reading the local papers while they’re home, taking the temperature of their constituents on health care before heading back to Washington. Can you write a letter to the editor about what needs to be in the final health care bill? There are some suggested points to make below, and you can click here to get started:

http://pol.moveon.org/lte?campaign_id=122&id=18436-7763971-4TSk1ux&t=3

Here’s the letter I sent to my small and quite conservative local paper:

The congressional conference committee will begin deliberations shortly on the two health care reform bills. They will focus on those parts of both bills that have been the most contentious.

Here’s the dilemma. Since this conference report is not budget resolution or budget reconciliation it may be filibustered in the Senate. Knowing this, it is generally acknowledged that the public option will not be in the final product because there are conservatives in the Senate Democratic caucus who would join the filibuster making the sixty vote threshold for cloture impossible to attain. Conversely, the House bill was passed with a strong public option. The sixty member progressive caucus has stated they would vote against a bill without the public option, dimming its chances in that chamber.

So what is a good compromise? There must be something new in the conference report that would create competition in the insurance industry to hold down costs – the main argument for the public option – and yet not be a “government takeover”, the debunked but emotional argument against the public option.

There is an answer in the Senate bill. It allows for private insurers to offer nonprofit coverage through insurance exchanges that would be overseen by the Office of Personnel Management, the same office that oversees the FEHB health care package that all federal employees are offered. At least one plan must be nonprofit and the plan would be available nationwide.

This is a viable solution to the public option dilemma. It allows for competition to control the runaway costs of insurance premiums yet is provided by private insurers, not the government.

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MoveOn.org Political Action,health care bill,the public option,congressional conference committee,Senate Democratic caucus,budget resolution,budget reconciliation,insurance industry,Office of Personnel Management,nonprofit coverage,insurance exchanges