As soon as health care passes, the American people will see immediate benefits. The legislation will:

• Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
• Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
• Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
• Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;
• Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
• Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
• Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
• Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
• Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

By enacting these provisions right away, and others over time, we will be able to lower costs for everyone and give all Americans and small businesses more control over their health care choices.

The Top Ten Immediate Benefits You’ll Get When Health Care Reform Passes | House Democrats

In 2008, voters in Louisiana's 2nd congressional district voted to send President Obama to Washington to fight for change -- including for desperately needed health insurance reform. They expected Republican Representative Joseph Cao to reach across the aisle to be a partner for change.

Unfortunately, after supporting reform last fall, Rep. Cao is reportedly now planning to vote to let insurance companies continue jacking up premiums and denying care to sick people. But it's not too late for him to put average Americans and the middle class ahead of corporate and special interests.

The next make-or-break vote on reform is just a few days away, it's expected to be extremely close, and Rep. Cao could be critical. So for Day 7 of the Final March for Reform, our plan is to reach out to voters in his district and ask them to call their representative to speak out for reform.

Using our easy online tool, we'll give you a list of friendly voters and tips on what to say. If we can help even a few of these folks call Rep. Cao's office it could make a huge difference -- so please take a few minutes and get started now.

Our online Neighbor-to-Neighbor tool makes calling quick and easy. Once you log in (it only takes a few seconds) you'll get a list of like-minded voters in Rep. Cao's district.\

Our message is simple: Rep. Cao can stand with Louisiana families and businesses by casting a key "yes" vote or continue on the path of bitter partisanship and suffer at the polls in November.

Today, OFA supporters across the country are calling voters in similar districts as part of our Final March for Reform. It's not too late for Republican representatives to do the right thing for their districts and the nation -- we only hope they're willing to listen to their constituents.

After so many months of work, a final vote could come any day, and every vote in the House could tip the balance. Please don't wait -- call a few of these critical voters now:
http://my.barackobama.com/Day7

Thanks,
Mitch
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

P.S. -- Would you rather make these calls with other volunteers? This week, OFA supporters nationwide are hosting Final March for Reform events to reach out to voters in critical districts.

You can find one in your area here:

http://my.barackobama.com/Day7RSVP

 

A leading Democratic consultant who serves in an official capacity with the Democratic National Committee has come out in favor of primary challenges to Democratic lawmakers who help kill the president's health care bill.

Donna Brazile, who is the Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation at the DNC and a top-ranking strategist within the party, said on Monday that Democrats who "decide to defeat" the health care bill "deserve to get a primary challenge" in future elections.

The one-time Al Gore presidential campaign manager told the Huffington Post that while at home in Louisiana she had "decided to stop pretending that I will go back to support anyone not backing health reform."

Brazile declined to elaborate, but made her view clear in a tweet she wrote shortly after President Barack Obama made an impassioned health care speech in Ohio on Monday.

DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan said that Brazile's call to support primary candidates for Democrats who vote against health care was not committee policy. Indeed, as former DNC Chair Howard Dean noted to the Huffington Post, the committee is prohibited under its bylaws from "being involved in a primary challenge."

Nevertheless it is a telling illustration of just how high emotions are running in this crucial late-stage portion of the health care reform debate. Until now, the main voices calling for primaries for Democrats who withhold their support for reform have been progressive organization and union groups.

Brazile doesn't carry the same type of threat as these institutions, both of which can rally supporters or funnel donations behind candidates. But to the extent that her remarks illustrate reluctance among those with close ties to the party to support candidates who oppose reform, they are foreboding. Though for Dean, they are no different than how emotions run in any big legislative battle.

Donna Brazile Urges Primaries For Dems Who Vote Against Health Care Reform

Consumer Reports, the trusted independent organization that we depend on to help us discern good products and services from bad ones is an ardent supporter of the healthcare reform bill after studying it in detail. Help get this bill to the finish line now. I just gave my donation to the cause, if able please give yours now. Forego a few cups of coffee for this just, moral, and required cause.

 Right now, they’re counting the phone calls in your Representative’s office. Who is calling against health reform, who is for it.

They’re keeping a minute-by-minute tally – undecided members are getting swayed; those who already voted ‘yes’ are reconsidering.

But these calls aren’t all coming from your neighbors. Highly organized opponents are flooding members offices with calls against health reform, and they’re often coming from people on the other side of the country.

The House of Representatives is braced for the climactic final vote on health reform this week. We're making sure lawmakers who are on the fence hear from supporters in their own districts. Your quick $10 donation will help get to "YES!"

 

If everyone can give $10 right now, we’ll make sure Representatives hear from their own constituents who want health reform!

 

The final up-or-down vote is in days – House leaders just told members to 'brace themselves' for a climatic vote. And we need your help to make sure real constituents who want reform are getting through to their members. We're reaching out then patching people directly through to their own lawmaker to send a message of support.

Our campaign has already generated a huge volume of calls, but we're running out of money to expand into more districts where calls are needed!

Your $10 will be put directly into constituent patch-through calls from voters to undecided lawmakers.
This aggresive effort is a first for us, but we know what’s at stake – a do-or-die vote on giving you and your family real protection against the insurance giants. That’s why they’re using your money from your premiums to help fund a massive, last-minute negative ad campaign targeting undecided Representatives.

Health reform has always been a David vs. Goliath battle, but our slingshot is armed by real constituents who want real change--and you can help us fire it with your donation now!

Thank you for EVERYTHING you have done to get us to this point in the health care battle. And if you can’t give, please forward this to others so they can help us get all Americans health coverage we can count on.

Sincerely,
Kathy Mitchell
Consumers Union Action Fund, Inc.
506 W. 14th Street, Suite A
Austin, TX 78701

On health care reform: this is a good bill

Yesterday, I voiced my support for health care reform with an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. I am grateful to those who saw my speaking-out for what it was: a former legislator reaching out to Congress to step up and solve one of our nation's greatest problems. As I told FoxNews, "It's a matter of voting for a good bill."

Look, if you take even one step beyond the partisanship and dig down into the numbers, you will find that most Americans want health care reform. And if you want to know why this is a good health care reform bill, I recommend a recent informative article by the Associated Press.

Here's what I wrote in the Tribune:

I've been a Republican all my life, when I served in the Illinois legislature, when I worked for members of Congress and when I served in Congress. During the 2008 presidential election, I supported Republican Sen. John McCain. I have always been — and still am — a fiscal conservative, an advocate for a smart, but restrained, government.

For those reasons and others, most people wouldn't expect me to be an advocate for comprehensive health care reform. But the truth is, I believe there is no bigger issue to solve and no better chance to solve it than now.
If I were still a member of Congress, I would proudly vote for the bill that President Barack Obama is championing and I would urge my colleagues to do the same, not because I don't believe in fiscal discipline, but because I do.

We do not need to look that far down the road to see the pain that failure to pass health care reform will cause. Americans of every background, class, race and political persuasion are suffering. We have the best health care system in the world, yet more than 40 million Americans lack access to it, a reality that is morally reprehensible. Health care is an essential, as important as food, water and shelter. Those who don't have it are left without the tools to survive.

In the coming days, Congress has a chance to change that. The bill that will be voted on will reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion over the next two decades, and will reduce waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system. It will slow the rate of growth in health care costs and put America back on the path toward fiscal sustainability.

The bill will give families and small business owners greater control over their own health care. It will expand coverage to more than 31 million Americans and will include tax credits to individuals, families and small businesses, giving them the same choices that members of Congress have to purchase private coverage. It will create state-based exchanges that will bring competition and transparency to insurance markets. And it will put in place common-sense rules of the road to hold insurance companies  accountable and end some of the most outrageous practices of the insurance industry.

Never again will people be denied coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. Never again will insurance companies be able to raise rates unfairly — like the 60 percent hikes expected in Illinois.
While the ultimate vote on health care may not be bipartisan, the ultimate bill certainly is.

There are several Republican ideas in the bill. It allows Americans to buy health insurance across state lines. It increases the bargaining power of small businesses by allowing them to pool together — much like large corporations or labor unions — to bargain for a better insurance rate. It gives states the flexibility to come up with an alternate health care plan, and it gives them resources to reform our tort system by developing new ways to deal with medical malpractice.

I also feel compelled to remind my former colleagues that contrary to what many people have been saying, the bill explicitly prevents federal dollars from being used to fund abortion. It ensures not only that those seeking abortion coverage will be required to pay for it with their own money, but also that their personal money will never be commingled with federal funds. As a former congressman with a 100 percent pro-life voting record, I'm comfortable supporting this bill.

There isn't one member of Congress who represents a district that is without a health care crisis. There are good, hardworking men and women in every part of this country who work for a living, but not at a business that offers the opportunity to purchase health insurance. On their own, the cost of insurance is just plain out of reach.

During my time in Congress, I was known for reaching across the aisle. I did it not for the sake of bipartisanship alone, but in order to get important things done.
Now, my former colleagues have the opportunity to change the lives of their friends and neighbors for the better by voting for health care reform.

Now, my former colleagues have the opportunity to change the lives of their friends and neighbors for the better by voting for health care reform.

On health care reform: this is a good bill - Welcome to the Fast Lane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation

Washington (CNN) -- Is the Coffee Party on the scale of the Tea Party movement? Saturday is the first big test in attempting to answer that question.

Leaders of the fledgling movement say they plan to hold 350 to 400 events at coffeehouses across the country. While the Coffee Party has become an instant hit online, gauging the success of Saturday's coast-to-coast events could be an indicator of the group's strength.

"We need to wake up and work hard to get our government to represent us," says Annabel Park, the movement's founder.

Angry at what she perceived as media overexposure of the conservative Tea Party movement, Park, a 41-year-old Washington-area documentary filmmaker, used her Facebook page to call for a Coffee Party. CONTINUED

Coffee vs. Tea: A political movement is brewing - CNN.com

The Right has always attempted to portray themselves as the law and order party that best knew how to protect the country. Of course the largest terrorists attack on our country that caused more deaths than any terrorist attack ever occurred under their watch. Their policies of torture and unadulterated and indiscriminate aggression failed to keep us safe. Lucky for our country that the professionals under the current administration did not succumb to the Right’s rhetoric attempting to codify a policy of racial profiling. The capture of two ladies completely foreign to the profile or stereotype is proof positive that the Right must simply be considered purveyors of failed ideological policies and rhetoric.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez Held In Connection With Plot To Assassinate Swedish Cartoonist

IVAN MORENO | 03/13/10 08:25 PM

 

LEADVILLE, Colo. — Before her daughter disappeared last fall, Christina Mott recalls that the 31-year-old who had been held in connection with an alleged assassination plot announced she had converted to Islam and told them they'd go to hell if they didn't follow in her steps.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez also began talking about Jihad with her Muslim stepfather and spent most of her time online as she withdrew from her family, Mott said.

"We were enemies," Christine Mott, 59, said. "We couldn't even speak to each other."

Paulin-Ramirez left Leadville, Colo., an old mining town west of Denver, on Sept. 11, and took her 6-year-old son with her, her mother said. A U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Saturday that Paulin-Ramirez had been detained in Ireland in connection with an alleged plot to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks, whose 2007 sketch depicted the head of the Prophet Muhammad on a dog's body, offending many Muslims and provoking terror front Al-Qaida in Iraq to offer a $100,000 bounty for his slaying.

Irish police said later Saturday that they had released an American woman and three others arrested in Ireland over an alleged plot to assassinate Swedish artist Lars Vilks had been freed without charge. Three others remained in custody and were being questioned. Irish police refused to confirm whether Paulin-Ramirez is the woman in custody, and have declined to release the identities of any of those arrested.

Smoking as she sat on her living room couch in Leadville, Christine Mott said she hadn't eaten in days. She described her daughter as troubled single mother who had the "mentality of an abused woman" and who, in trying to escape her loneliness, may have spiraled into the depths of Islam extremism. Her reported arrest came hours before U.S. authorities unveiled a terror indictment against another American woman, Colleen LaRose, of Pennsylvania.

U.S. authorities on Tuesday unsealed terror charges against the 46-year-old LaRose, who allegedly went by the name "Jihad Jane" to recruit others online to kill the cartoonist.

Mott told The Associated Press that she learned of her daughter's arrest in the case from the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies.

Denver FBI officials said Saturday they couldn't confirm that the FBI had contacted Mott about the case.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez Held In Connection With Plot To Assassinate Swedish Cartoonist

The head of the national association of Catholic hospitals, which holds great sway in the health care debate, threw her support Saturday behind the contested Senate reform bill in a move that could give a major boost to the legislation's prospects.
But the endorsement of Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, could also put the nun and her organization at odds with the Catholic hierarchy, which continues to oppose the bill due to its provision on abortion coverage.
As Politics Daily has reported, the Senate bill does not appear to allow for abortion funding, contrary to what many pro-life critics have claimed. But the dispute is proving pivotal to the bill's chances in the House, where a cadre of pro-life Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) has threatened to sink the it if their demands for stronger anti-abortion language are not met.
In her statement Saturday, Keehan made it clear she thinks any qualms about abortion language in the Senate version can be resolved, and in any event are not enough to justify opposition to what Catholic leaders say is a pro-life issue and a "human right" -- universal and affordable health care. Keehan attended a March 3 briefing by President Obama at the White House, an event she said clarified her decision to support the bill.
"As I watched our president present his plan to pass the health reform legislation, it was clear this is an historic opportunity to make great improvements in the lives of so many Americans," Keehan said in her statement. "Is it perfect? No. Does it cover everyone? No. But is it a major first step? Yes."
She "has a major concern on life issues" about the bill, she said, and believes they will require monitoring should the bill become law. But she believes the concerns are adequately addressed by the mechanism to keep abortion coverage apart from the government-regulated health care markets. CONTINUED

Catholic Health Group Accepts Abortion Language in Reform Bill -- Politics Daily

Twenty-five pro-life Catholic theologians and Evangelical leaders yesterday sent letters to members of Congress urging them not to let misleading information about abortion provisions in the Senate health care bill block passage of sorely-needed reform.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that the Senate health bill upholds abortion funding restrictions and supports pregnant women.

The letter included a page by page analysis of the Senate bill as it pertains to abortion.

The group asked members of Congress “to make an informed decision about this legislation based on careful deliberation guided by facts.”

“We believe that the provisions below provide extensive evidence that longstanding restrictions on federal funding of abortion have been maintained. Furthermore, this bill provides new and important supports for vulnerable pregnant women,” the letter states.

The complete text of the letter follows:

Dear Member of Congress,

As Christians committed to a consistent ethic of life, and deeply concerned with the health and well-being of all people, we want to see health care reform enacted. Our nation has a rare and historic opportunity to expand coverage to tens of millions of people, make coverage more affordable for all families, and crack down on many of the most harmful practices of the health insurance industry.

We are writing because of our concern about the lack of clear and accurate information regarding abortion provisions in the health care reform bill passed by the Senate on December 24, 2009.

Reforming our health care system is necessarily complex, and the provisions related to abortion, or any other issue, require careful examination of the facts as they exist in the legislative language. We believe that the provisions below provide extensive evidence that longstanding restrictions on federal funding of abortion have been maintained. Furthermore, this bill provides new and important supports for vulnerable pregnant women.

Following is a comprehensive factual listing of all provisions related to abortion and positive supports for pregnant women in HR 3590, along with specific page references.

Abortion-Related Provisions Included in the Senate-Approved Health Care Reform Bill “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (HR 3590 EAS/PP)

CONTINUED

Pro-life group urges Congress to pass Senate health care bill | National Catholic Reporter

The Final March for Reform is going strong -- yesterday, OFA supporters made the phones ring off the hook in Congressional offices on Capitol Hill and across the country. But for every member of Congress, there are eight anti-reform lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill -- and the upcoming vote is still too close to call.

So in these crucial, final days, we must make sure the voices of constituents break through the lobbyist attacks. And here's the plan to make it happen:

As the next step in the Final March for Reform, OFA supporters like you will be gathering at volunteer phone banks across the country. We'll be calling supportive voters in critical districts nationwide, asking them to reach out to their representatives and express their strong support for reform. A local OFA organizer will be on hand at every event, and no experience is required.

Here's how to join in: First, RSVP for an event near you -- there's one in Houston, on March 13th. Before you go, make sure to invite friends to come with you, or help them find an event in their area on our website. Then join with local supporters at your event and reach out to as many voters as you can -- each call makes a vital difference.

RSVP here to get started. Here are the details for the event nearest you:

What: Final March for Reform Phone Bank
Where: 1102 Pinemont Dr. #I
Houston, TX 77018
When: Saturday, March 13th
12:00 PM

Can't make it to that event in Houston? Click here to search for other events near you.
As we speak, insurance-industry lobbyists are deploying from their emergency base at the D.C. Ritz-Carlton, banging down the door of every Congressional office on Capitol Hill to derail reform and preserve their ability to jack up premiums and deny care to those in need.

In the old Washington, that would have been an unstoppable barrage.

But thanks to your unprecedented organizing, the lobbyists have finally met their match: the American people.

So let's get out there, and make sure the people's voice is heard.

Please sign up to join the Final March for Reform event in Houston, on March 13th:

http://my.barackobama.com/FinalMarch-RSVP
Let's finish this,
Jeremy
Jeremy Bird
Deputy Director
Organizing for America