Congresswoman Maloney,

I find it most troubling that a supposed member of the progressive caucus in the House of Representatives would make the statement quoted below.

“So, while I agree health care reform must have the public option and I will fight for it; I also believe health care reform is too important to maintain the status quo and, even though I won’t like a bill that doesn’t include the public option, if that happens, the principle of getting people health care who don’t currently have it must come before any one particular method to achieve it.”

The President has stated that he wants a public plan to keep the insurance industry honest. That articulates the progressive standard by which anyone who can vote on this issue will be judged. Why you have chosen to publicly announce/signal a “bottom line” that fails to include a public plan only betrays the extraordinary opportunity that this moment in our collective history offers us.

With a commanding majority of Democrats in the House and a clear majority of Democrats in the Senate, telegraphing your personal willingness to cave like this only encourages and strengthens the opposition to a public plan.

You would like to see single payer, as would I, but the bottom line compromise is having a public option and not settling for less.

Such willingness to give up what this moment holds forth as THE option is unworthy of constituent support in either a House or Senate electoral race and you should not think that giving in on this will be overlooked or forgotten. We’ve become much more aware of what it takes to get elected or in your case re-elected to let such weak-kneed, lukewarm advocacy for a public plan pass without consequence.

The 2008 election changed many things, not the least of which was a heightened awareness of constituent electoral power. The genie is out of the bottle.

Party discipline and unity when the Democratic numbers are there to make progressive change happen are what are called for from you and our other electeds at this historic time.

We need to hear you come out for a public plan the way Charles Schumer, Charlie Rangel, and, yes, Kirsten Gillibrand, have and now is the time for you to be heard loud and clear.

Yours for a robust public health care plan (as part of the President’s three principles),

John de Clef Piñeiro, Esq.
110 West 90th Street Unit 5-J
New York, N.Y. 10024
212-580-4616

I think Pelosi has to be reminded by her constituents that she is there to represent US, and her district overwhelmingly supports not just a public option but a real European/Canadian style single payer system. Her leadership has to reflect that.

So all you Bay Area people out there, call Pelosi!

And–thank you, BooRadley–I’ll call Maloney’s office tomorrow and follow your lead in saying I will send money to NY to support another candidate without a public option pledge from her.

Also to all of you who commented about left and middle Dems: there is no left or middle on health care: just about everyone wants Medicare for all.

I think what some such as Kip and selise don’t understand is the effort and complexity it takes for us to really mount a sustained push. We don’t have paid staffers like the health insurance lobbyists. We rely on volunteers, such as me, making calls. We frequently rely on interns inside the offices receiving them. Whatever the message is, it has to be basic enough for both those groups, who are frequently not rocket scientists. It’s a big stumbling block through which the messaging has to be filtered.

A lot of this efforting, the phone calls, the fund raising is about momentum. It’s about energizing people.

So when policy wonks or trolls come on and say we’re off message, it’s really deflating, destructive to the momentum. Jane for all the right reasons is committed to open commenting. I agree with that and applaud her for it. It’s a critical feedback loop in impacting the legislative process accurate and timely information.

With the caveat that bullet points are not the same as lines of legislation, the CPC robustness criteria are stronger than HCAN’s (on which Jane’s pledge is based) in at least two key ways:

1. CPC calls for the public plan to be available to all individuals and/or employers who want it, without restriction. The HCAN principles are silent on this score. The Senate HELP bill severely restricts who can opt for the public plan. We’ll see where the House tri-committee bill falls when the details come out today. Obviously, a public plan can’t inflict punishing competitive damage on for-profit insurers if people aren’t free to choose it.

2. CPC calls for the public plan to piggyback on existing government health-financing infrastructures to the maximum degree possible. Ideally, this would constitute an expansion and adjustment of Medicare. HCAN says it doesn’t matter whether the public plan is government run or merely government appointed. Obviously, building a new infrastructure is more costly than expanding on an existing successful one.

For all my criticisms of the public option strategy, hats off to Jane’s citizen whip action and to the citizen markup brigade that Jane, Eve, and others are initiating. There’s a great deal to be said for getting our goddamn feet in the door, even if initially in the name of “any old” public option, and then harnessing public outrage once inside to change the terms of our demands to something even Kip Sullivan could sign onto. It’s a gamble, because I agree with Kip that if we don’t achieve a true, industry-withering public plan from the start, the system could well be harder to fix than if it failed and we started again from scratch.

But I see a vitality and sharpness of direction in the whip and markup efforts that put much of both the existing single payer and public option campaigns to shame.

That all of us reading this post vow that we will educate ourselves about what type of public program will work, and immediately lobby Congress to write language that does that and insert that language in place of the sad, ridiculous language in the House bill now.

I strongly agree with this sentiment and have encouraged setting out the requirements of a public plan in writing and also giving it a specific name, e.g. “progressive public plan” or any name that works. The public plan is still too amorphous and requires me to go on faith, which I am not inclined to do. That’s why I refused to support the OFA activism. I can’t go out and sell this to people I know without clear definition. Right now, I’m trusting Jane and Eve, whom I trust on this issue. But I think it would make everyone’s job easier if we had a well-defined, named, public plan.

My understanding was that the Progressive Caucus did lay out the foundation for this some weeks ago but I’m not sure how effective that turned out to be. I’d like to see a package, a named public plan, that could be dropped into any legislation. Without that, we risk getting punked and it is much more difficult to find out what a congressperson supports and makes it difficult to assess what’s in a bill and get whip counts once the things start moving very quickly.

Maybe this has happened already and I’m just not aware of it yet. If that is the case, I withdraw my criticism (but I would like to know so I can get up to speed).

FWIW, I called Rangel’s office last Friday.

IMHO, offices frequently order interns/staffer to lie and tell you they never heard of “the pledge,” or of Firedoglake or of any other blog.

I always stay polite and calm. The people answering the phones are not the problem and I certainly don’t want to alienate them.

FWIW, I’ve been having a lot of success when I mention the $5,000 we’ve raised for those who have committed to “the pledge.” That gets people’s attention.

OT, offices seem a lot more receptive this week than last.

OT, I always try and mention as a positive those who voted against the War Supplemental. If they didn’t vote against it, I mention this is a chance to redeem themselves. Staffers/interns don’t like being reminded that their boss caved in on the war supplemental.
Whip Count The Final Total Or How We Went From 0 – 32