RSS Feed
|
Essential Health Benefits Don’t Slow Down! A Call a Day Keeps Trumpcare Away! The GOP health care bill strips away the Essential Health Benefits provisions that were an important part of the ACA. States participating in the exchanges will be allowed waivers of EHBs, lowering the quality and range of benefits provided by plans. There is talk of taking away the tax break part of the bill - but of course they’ll just put it somewhere else. Postponing tax breaks while still reducing funding for health care is a NON-SOLUTION. Action: 1. Call your senators and leave a voicemail message (they probably won’t answer on a Saturday) a) demanding that NONE of the EHB provisions of the ACA be removed or weakened in any way; b) saying that removing the tax break part of the bill will not increase its acceptability one little bit. Contact info: www.senate.gov 2. Keep up the pressure on the ten GOP swing votes in the Senate, especially if you’re from one of their states. Call and leave a message with at least one of them, saying that McConnell’s tweaks are meaningless and derisory. Contact info, statistics, as well as re-Tweetable Tweets for the Ten here: http://www.trumpcareten.org/
0 Comments
Health Care Senate Recess Action: 1. Familiarize yourself with the reason the GOP bill is BAD for people with pre-existing conditions, despite whatever spin the Republicans are trying to put on it. Read this: http://www.indivisibleguide.com/resource/senate-trumpcare-bill-fails-people-with-pre-existing-conditions/ 2. In your own words, if you aren’t shy and don’t have too many trollfriends, publicize a bite-sized version of this information on social media. 3. Then call your senators’ offices. By now you should have all your senators’ offices’ numbers stored in your phone. Keep calling down the list until you are able to leave a message - or, better, talk to a human - and ask two things:
Senate contact info: www.senate.gov Health Care - Hit ‘Em Harder Mitch McConnell may try to sweeten the GOP health “care” bill. But beware - it is aspartame not honey he’s going to be offering!!
Action: Keep contacting your senators - emphasize that you will NOT be satisfied with any of McConnell’s lame pacifiers, which are only an offer to slow the train to Annihilation Station, not to turn it around. Ask your senators to stand up for all Americans, not just individual groups or areas. Contact www.senate.gov. If you are from a state with one of the swing-vote senators, keep after them. This page has good suggestions: http://www.trumpcareten.org/ Health “Care” Delayed but not Stopped Keep Pushing!! The pressure on the Senate must now become even more relentless. Action: 1) If your senator is one of the GOP swing senators who have already come out against the bill - Heller (NV) and Collins (ME) - write to thank them. Then go after your other senator - see Options 3 or 4 below. It would be nice if everyone thanked Heller and Collins - just don’t tie up their telephones if you’re not a constituent - write, fax, or email instead. 2) If your senator is one of the other GOP swing senators - Murkowski (AK), Sullivan (AK), Capito (WV), Flake (AZ), Gardner (CO), Portman (OH), Toomey (PA), Cassidy (LA), Cotton (AR) - go to this Indivisible page, click on your state, and you’ll be given various suggested actions. Do as many actions as you can. 3) If your senator is a Democrat: a) ask that they refuse to let the bill go to a vote on reconciliation; they can prevent this by adding thousands of amendments; b) ask that they loudly and publicly educate their constituents and the media about the disastrous consequences of the GOP bill; and c) if you haven’t taken June 27’s action yet, do so now. 4) If your senator is Republican, go to this Indivisible page, where you can find information about the impact of Trump”care” on your state. Put this information on your FB, Tweet it, complain about it to your senators. You’ll also find links to contact your senators and their legislative assistants (who are their aides for this issue). N.B. Even if you’re really uncool like me and have only one Twitter follower, it’s still worth Tweeting. I saw that one of my Tweets lead to a click to a link to call a senator. Health Care Countdown The Republicans are going to try and force through the health “care” bill on reconciliation, which means they will only need 50 votes instead of 60. Democrats can stall this process by means of relentlessly adding amendments until the GOP agrees to hold public hearings on the health “care” bill, which the CBO report now shows to be extremely damaging to public health. Action: Go to Indivisible’s page where you can fill out a request for your senator to submit an amendment. The amendment will be submitted by Indivisible in your name. Just follow the instructions on the page. Indivisible suggests that you also print out a copy of the amendment and take it to your senators’ offices. If you prefer, you can email or fax it to your senators instead. Here’s what you have to do first - copy and paste the amendment into a file where you can substitute your name wherever it says [First Name Last Name] and substitute your state wherever it says [State}; then copy or attach the amendment which contains your name to the email or fax you send. This action has special importance if your senator/s is/are Democrats - they need to show some more gumption at this point. Here’s the Indivisible page: www.ouramendments.org Optional extra action:
Keep Hitting Health Care! Action: 1. If your state is one of the 32 (including DC) which adopted Medicaid expansion, contact your state governor and ask him/her to speak up loudly and publicly against the GOP health “care” bill, which makes deep cuts into the program. You can see a map of Medicaid expansion states in this Business Insider article. For example, in Pennsylvania, 5,578 out of every 100,000 residents was able to obtain coverage under Medicaid expansion. In other words, 713, 984 Pennsylvanians have gained coverage thanks to Obamacare and Medicaid expansion. The GOP bill, unlike the AHA, puts a per-capita limit on the amount granted to each state to cover patients in the Medicaid expansion program. In addition, Medicaid will no longer keep pace with medical-cost inflation, and the expansion funds will be cut completely by 2024. Many states will see huge numbers of citizens losing coverage. 2. There is no state which receives less than 50% federal funding for its Medicaid program, whether or not it chose to adopt Medicaid expansion. So even die-hard Republican let-em-eat-cake Texas receives 57.5% of its Medicaid funding from the federal government. These states will see a damaging loss of health care when Medicaid is capped. The social cost will be huge. If your state is one of these, please again contact your governor and and ask him/her to speak out against the GOP bill. The third map in this article shows the numbers. 3. The bill does not preserve protections for people with pre-existing conditions. States will be able to waive the essential benefits requirement and will be able to dump less healthy people into higher-cost pools. Contact your senators to complain. Senate contact info: www.senate.gov Find your state governor: www.usa.gov/state-governor Sunday - our day off. Maybe today's the day we'll finally listen to Bob Dylan's Nobel acceptance speech! www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TlcPRlau2Q Health Care Action: 1. Contact Dean Heller of Nevada and thank him for deciding to vote against the GOP health care bill. He’s concerned that the large number of people in Nevada who have benefited from Medicaid expansion will lose their coverage. He’s also come right out and called it a lie that Trumpcare will bring down premiums. Don’t gum up his phone lines - instead, send an email or fax. 2. Revisit Trumpcare Toolkit. If you haven’t called or tweeted at any of the listed senators, do so now. If you’ve already done so, do it again! These are senators who have the potential to vote against Trumpcare. You can also send them emails or faxes if you prefer. 3. If you have the time or inclination, keep contacting your own senators. Say whatever you feel moved to say. There are four conservative GOP senators (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee) who are opposing the bill because it’s too generous. If any of these belong to you, probably best to ignore them. They certainly don’t deserve thanks. Senate contact info: www.senate.gov Fax your senators for free: http://faxzero.com/fax_senate.php Still Health Care Until this thing is voted on, we have to keep contacting our senators every day. It may make no difference, but at least we will have tried. Action: as much as you have time for: 1. Return to www.trumpcaretoolkit.org - retweet the tweets, and call the swing senators. 2. Email and/or fax your own senators, especially if GOP. 2. Keep calling your own senators, especially if GOP, and call more than one of their offices. Senate contact info: www.senate.gov Free fax to senators: http://faxzero.com/fax_senate.php Good News & Health Care (of course) First of all - THANK YOU to all who contacted the Mayor of Houston (Plan of Action, June 19). Mayor Turner had been waffling on whether or not he would support a lawsuit brought by Houston City Council against the State of Texas to combat SB4, a hostile piece of legislation designed to tighten the net around immigrants. Mayor Turner and the Council have now decided they WILL bring a lawsuit. Nice to have a bit of good news! Health Care Action: Donald Trump has now famously declared the AHCA to be “mean” and said that the Senate bill should be “more generous”. For once he speaks truth! Read about it here: http://theweek.com/speedreads/707066/week-after-trump-called-houses-healthcare-bill-mean-says-senates-needs-more-heart Call your senators again, and explicitly reference the President’s comments. After all, he did campaign on a promise of universal, affordable healthcare, and the Senate should deliver a bill in keeping with the President’s campaign platform. Senate contact info: www.senate.gov |
Archives
November 2019
|