Public Option Please has been launched. CBO ignored a huge important provisions in their analysis of the Baucus bill. The media does not seem to care that the CBO "score" is pretty meaningless as a result. How dare unions fight to protect their members’ health care! Allowing states to opt out of the public option [...]

A group of 30 Senate Democrats sent a letter to Harry Reid asking that a public option be included as part of health care reform. The letter was not supportive of Conrad’s co-ops idea: it is not realistic to expect local co-ops to spring up in every corner of this country. There are many areas [...]

The biggest problem with the public option opt-out idea is that it would deny the public option to those people who need it most. Most of the states with the highest percentage of uninsured residents tend to be Republican states. The top ten states with the highest percentage of residents without health insurance in 2008 [...]

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has announced a new plan to improve the individual mandate. Instead of being a tax or fine paid directly to the government, the money will be taken from the individual and put into a trust. This individual trust fund could be used to purchase health insurance in the future. Americans could [...]

The vote on the Senate Finance Committee health care bill is scheduled for Tuesday. The committee has 13 Democrats and 10 Republicans. The big vote to watch for is Republican senator Olympia Snowe. She is seen by many as the only possible Republican vote for any health care reform legislation. If Snowe does vote for [...]

We are launching POP today as an advocacy organization with these goals:

1. Reframe the debate in human terms — health care is a human right.  This is fight against bloodless corporate interests and the cost is human lives.  We need to say that.
2. Reach out beyond the hard-core political audience to young people who are inspired to shape their future
3. Advocate, as Eve has done for years, for those who have been abandoned by the medical industrial complex
4. Hire a lobbyist to be on Capitol Hill to fight the battle on an ongoing basis where it will continue, day in and day out, long after a health care bill has passed
5. Win the passage for a public option now.  With the knowledge that it’s just the beginning. 

The art for the campaign was designed by Justin Kemerling, who was one of the artists featured in Shepard Fairey’s Manifest Hope exhibit.  In the coming days, we’ll be announcing an art contest and with celebrity judges and featuring YouTubes of musicians, artists and ordinary Americans demanding a public option.  We’ll be taking up the cause of those, like Nataline, whose lives are considered acceptable losses in the quest for corporate profits.  

Marshall Ganz recently said that progressive health care activists need to engage the public and to take to the streets.   “I don’t know a single significant social change accomplished in this country that hasn’t involved civil disobedience at one time or another,” he recently told Laura Flanders.  In the past week, people in Minnesota and in Philadelphia have engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience and were arrested to demonstrate their commitment to this cause.  And last night, many watched as Keith Olbermann made a passionate, personal, hour long plea for health care reform. 

It’s in the air.  People are ready for it.  Please visit POP at publicoptionplease.com and let us know what you think. You can buy stickers designed by Justin, or donate and receive a special signed,  limited edition poster he designed for the campaign.  The proceeds will go to fund POP’s ongoing campaign to achieve health care for all.

Looking through the CBO letter about the Baucus bill, there is one striking fact that most of the media is overlooking. The CBO claims in the report that they did not score the full bill. They admit to completely ignoring a huge provision that is projected to reduce the cost of the bill by roughly [...]

And go say “hi” to Eve on her POP diary this morning.  As I said, we’ll have more later.  But this is where this battle has to go in order for it to become a movement that can achieve universal health care, not just a short-term political battle.  Her heart, and the heart of those who are willing to get arrested because they believe passionately in social justice for all, is the thing that will carry us to victory in the battle for universal health care.

Let’s let states who don’t like choice opt out of Roe v. Wade.

Fuck those poor people who live in Republican states easily bought off by corrupt legislatures.  They don’t deserve heatlh care anyway.

God I love Democrats.  Headed for the endzone, they pick up the ball and run it 10 yards in the wrong direction. 

Every.  Single.  Time.

People take action for real health care reform. . . and get arrested. CBO says Conrad’s co-ops are completely useless. Baucus bill is not real change–it is, at best, a minor improvement that still leaves us with a horrible health care system. Rockefeller and Brown push Reid for a real public option. Which is good [...]