Health care is a human right, and to quote a nice, elderly man from my hippie church "We all need to get off our asses and make sure this thing passes!"

It's been a long time since I've posted on MOMocrats, the blog I started along with Glennia and Beth because, after 8 years of Bush "leading" our country, there was no way we were going to allow a Republican to become president.

After the election of Barack Obama, I was completely burned out. So much of my time, effort, brain space, and blogging was devoted to getting a Democrat elected that I needed a break. I just didn't expect that it would last 9 months.

I can't remember the last time I watched Olbermann. I don't hit refresh on Huffington Post or Politico or factcheck.org multiple times a day like I used to. My papers stacked up so I finally canceled my subscriptions. I have been content to focus on other aspects of my life feeling as if now, our country is finally in good hands. And it mostly is.

Except that over the last month or so, as I have watched the people who are working so hard to reform our failing healthcare system and to pass HR676 having to do battle against a well-funded, lie-spreading machine, I have gotten angrier and angrier. How people like Sarah Palin are STILL being so careless with their words. Death panels and socialized medicine? And people believe it.

How members of congress who have accepted hundreds or millions of dollars in donations from insurance and pharmaceutical companies are allowed time on the floor.

How Democratic members of congress (I'm looking at you, Feinstein) can say, "I am not for a public option."

And the guns.  Don't even get me started on the guns.

As I sat in my beloved hippie church today, listening to our speaker, Lynn Huidekoper, one of the founders of the Single Payer Coalition, share information on this landmark healthcare decision—a reform that could finally bring the United States in line with the other 27 highly developed nations of the world—I knew that it was time. Healthcare reform was my path back to MOMocrats. I know that my sisters here have been carrying on the healthcare fight for months now, but now is the time that I need to step up and do my part.

We MOMocrats did so much good before sharing our thoughts and combating lies and getting the right person elected president, that it's time to do it again. Healthcare needs to be our change we can believe in. If you believe that our current system is broken and that healthcare is a basic human right—that access to good healthcare is something that all people should have—then you, too, regardless of your political or religious affiliation, must take up this fight. It is only through the efforts of a very passionate and vocal grassroots effort that we are going to get HR676 passed.

So what can you do? 

First, let's counteract the lies and untruths with what Huidekoper calls, "no-brainers." These are the simple facts that you can copy and paste and include in an email to all your family and friends, and they are:

1. Healthcare is a human right.
2. We are not starting from scratch--we are taking an existing program, Medicare, and expanding it.
3. Medicare is a single payer program for those 65 and older. (We know what it is.)
4. Single payer means expanding Medicare to cover all. (Take something we are already doing and make it cover all Americans, not just those 65 and older.)
5. 5% overhead instead of 30% (Think about how much insurance and pharamaceutical companies spend on advertising. I never saw ads for erectile dysfuction, eyelash lengtheners, overactive bladder, or hyperactive leg syndrome on TV 10 or 15 years ago.)
6. It will cost less.
7. Everyone is covered, no denials, no preexisting conditions.
8. It is NOT free.
9. Employees and Employers pay into the system. Look at your pay stub, we already know how to do it.
10. Business will be paying 4.75% payroll instead of 16%.
11. A rich benefit package will be available to all.
12. All will have long term care, vision and dental covered (individual state plans right now may not, but federal will).
13. No more bankruptcies due to health care bills.
14. It is NOT socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is where government owns the hospitals, doctors, and everything in it. There are only a handful of truly socialist medicine systems in the world and guess what?  One of them is in the United States: it's called the VA.
15. Health care delivery remains private. Under HR676 patients continue to see private doctors in private hospitals. Government claims will be processed by private insurance companies not government agencies. See #14: It is NOT socialized medicine.
16. Total choice of health care provider. Under single payer you can go to any doctor, not just the ones in your plan. HMOs are more restrictive NOW.
17. More money will go to health care.
18. No more middle man between doctor and patient, contrary to what opponents say. The middle men are the insurance companies who currently tell doctors what tests and medications they will and will not allow.
19. Doctors will regain control of healthcare--which is why 60% of doctors support single payer.
20. No more deaths due to uninsurance or denial of care. Twenty thousand people a year die yearly because they are not insured, are under insured, or have been denied care.  That is an outrage.
21. No more obscene salaries for insurance CEOs.
22. No more inhumane waits in ERs for primary care.
23 We will join all the other industrialized nations in covering EVERYONE.

TweetProgress: Building Progressive Infrastructure on Twitter

Guest poster Tracy Viselli (aka @myrnatheminx on Twitter, and an online political strategist at Reno Fabulous Media) shares a new tool progressives can use. See how and why to use it. You'll find many of the MOMocrats on TweetProgress. Come on in, the water's fine. And you can tweet via web on your laptop or from your mobile phone.

As a social media professional, I find myself constantly trying to explain the power to Twitter. And the way I frequently do this is by citing well known examples of parent bloggers using Twitter to influence the media and brands--examples like the Motrin baby wearing debacle and the more recent incident in which Dooce used Twitter to ultimately get Bosch to donate a free washer and dryer to a Salt Lake City homeless shelter. Parents bloggers understand the power of Twitter well enough, as do many political bloggers like the Momocrats, but not enough progressives online understand the activist potential of Twitter yet and that needs to change. TweetProgress is a Twitter activist project I launched with partners Jim Gilliam, Jon Pincus, and Gina Cooper. TweetProgress is a directory of progressives on Twitter meant to provide the basic infrastructure for social action on Twitter. TweetProgress aims to:

1. To help progressives find each other and follow each other on Twitter.
2. To encourage more progressives to use the Twitter.
3. To provide resources, tools, and guides to help progressives improve their use of Twitter for activism.

And there is already evidence that TweetProgress is growing the progressive community on Twitter. In the first 48 hours, more than 2,000 progressives added themselves to TweetProgress including Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore, MSNBC and Air American host Rachel Maddow, and Ohio Secretary of State and Senate candidate Jennifer Brunner among others. And in the first week, many directory members saw significant follower increases. For example, since the launch of TweetProgress, I gained more than 100 followers and the ACLU organizational Twitter account gained several hundred new followers which speaks well for how important it is for progressive organizations to add themselves to TweetProgress. While there aren't a lot of tools built specifically for activism yet, there is no doubt there will be in the near future if the hundreds of applications already created to work with Twitter are any clue. One existing activism tool for Twitter is Act.ly, a petition tool that many people have already used successfully to target workers rights in Florida, Pizza Hut sponsorship of Ringling Brothers Circus, and sexism in tech conference scheduling. 

Wonk 101: Ringling Bros. Ain’t Got Nothing on This Circus

In our last installment, we introduced you to the bill drafting process, and some basics on committee action. This post will cover more of the committee process and floor action, including why your congressperson pouts like a two-year-old when the words “closed rule” are thrown around.

After a bill is introduced, numbered, and assigned to committee, the process generally goes subcommittee hearing--->subcommittee markup & vote--->full committee hearing--->full committee markup & vote. This is called “normal order.” It might also be called relatively-rare-order since there are places where this process goes off the rails, both for good and for ill.

Go Read It: Health Insurance Reform is a Women's Issue

The Nation has a great post on why reforming the health insurance industry is a women's issue. It starts with the simple fact that women whose primary work is caretaking (of children or others) are ineligible for employer-based insurance, and may not be adequately covered by a spouse's insurance.

It's easier said than done to have insurance coverage prior to becoming pregnant. Sometimes life and work don't coincide that way, nor should a pregnancy be considered a "pre-existing condition," as too many policies do consider them.

And even if having a child is a far off or non-existent priority for you, personally, I think we can all agree that predatory insurers who target pregnant women with bogus insurance should be put in the stocks and pelted with offal for oh...forever.

Cynematic also blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

Happy Women's Equality Day!

Did you know that today, August 26 is Women's Equality Day in the US?  This day commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote.  Women's suffrage was first proposed in 1848, but did not become law until 1920, 72 years later.  For 72 years, American women organized, rallied, and fought for the right to vote, something we take for granted today. 

Women's Equality Day was first celebrated in 1971, after New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug proposed to mark August 26 as Women's Equality Day.  I had the honor of meeting Bella Abzug in 1980 at a rally.  She was a formidable, charming woman with a great passion for social change and women's rights.  She died in 1998.

In 1995, at the World Summit on Economic Development in Copenhagen, Bella said:

Our struggle is about resisting the slide into a morass of anarchy, violence, intolerance, inequality and injustice.

Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political and ecological crisis.

Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives, and attainable dreams...

Because the root of the problem is persistent inequalities and growing inequities.

For us to realize our dreams, we must keep our heads in the clouds and our feet on the ground.

We must marshal our courage and creativity and act together...

If we love ourselves, if we love our young, if we love our country and the earth, -- and we do -- then that same motivation must move us to create not only the words but the actions to remove the great divide between rich and poor.

In a Presidential Proclamation on Women's Equality Day, President Obama said:

Today, our country renews its commitment to freedom and justice for all our citizens. As we prepare to celebrate this women's day of equality, we reflect on the sacrifices once made to allow women and girls the basic rights and choices we freely exercise today. The future we leave to our daughters and granddaughters will be determined by our willingness to build on the achievements of our past and move forward as one people and one Nation. The fight for women's equality is not a woman's agenda, but an American agenda.

I hope that all women of voting age in the US will remember what a precious gift it is to be able to vote.  I hope that all women will take to heart Bella's words and know that the first act in the struggle for equality and justice for all people is to exercise your right to vote, not just in Presidential and national elections, but on every level.

--Glennia

Loss of a Liberal Lion

I'd like to add my voice to those who are mourning the passing last night of Senator Edward Kennedy, following a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Over the last 40+ years, Senator Kennedy was instrumental in the passage of legislation that has made all our lives better, especially in the areas of civil rights and health care (which he described last month in Newsweek as the cause of his life).

"We lost a true legislative hero in Ted Kennedy -- a defender of women, children and all those who are discriminated against and underserved in this country," said NOW President Terry O'Neill in a statement issued this morning. 

"We have Kennedy to thank for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act. He was a great leader in the fight for health care reform, and I only hope that we can honor him by passing real reform designed to benefit the people -- not insurance CEOs."

President Barack Obama has issued the following proclamation:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy was not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy. Over the past half-century, nearly every major piece of legislation that has advanced the civil rights, health, and economic well-being of hte Amercan people bore his name and resulted from his efforts. With his passing, an important chapter in our American story has come to an end.

American flags at public buildings and facilities will be flown at half-staff until sunset on August 30 and again until sunset on the day of Kennedy's internment.

Condolences to the Kennedy family. I, for one, vow to work harder to see the fruition of his life's cause.

Hear My Story: Reform for Sophie

Please welcome guest poster, Natalie.

I'm writing this today, not because I see myself as a political activist, but because our daughter lives with an on-going, critical need for health care, and because I want everyone to be able to put a face to the idea of health care reform. And what better face than our goofy, gorgeous, brave baby girl's?

Anyone who has ever met my daughter knows that she is just about the most lovable and kind person ever born. But they probably don't know about the struggles that she has faced, nor those that we have faced as a family because of her chronic condition. We're pretty private about a lot of this stuff, because, well, it isn't really anyone's business but our own. But I feel like this is an important time for honesty.

We moved from Colorado to Tulsa in Spring, 2003. At that time Sophie was two years old, and was the healthiest kid that you had ever met. In the two years she lived in Colorado, she had one stomach virus and two colds. Within a month of moving to Tulsa, Sophie developed pneumonia. And then weeks after that, she had it again. And then weeks after that, she had it again. This was a frustrating time, but we weren't too worried. We just kept going back to the doctor and getting more antibiotics and steroids. What would any parent do?

In fall of 2005, we decided to switch from our private, self-employment insurance that we had used for years to Blue Cross. There was a week-long gap between the policies - something that we didn't think anything of, because we simply did not know better. Just as our Blue Cross plan was set to start, we received a notice from them stating that they considered Sophie to have a pre-existing pulmonary problem (due to the amount of doctor's visits for pneumonia), and that while they would cover her in general, they wouldn't cover any pulmonary/respiratory issues until she had gone two years without needing medication or problems.

We were in shock.

California Congressional District 29: Congressman Adam Schiff's Health Care Town Hall

In case you were wondering, I attended the town hall held by my congressperson a little more than a week ago, and noticed no one in attendance packing heat. I joke here, but I take any vigilantism or talk of intimidating people with arguments made in the presence of a gun seriously. That's not reasoned debate, that's bullying.

Alhambra, CA. August 11, 2009.

The town hall was originally scheduled to be held inside a library, but so many people rsvp'd that it ended up being held outside on the blocked-off street outside the library. It garnered a lot of attention as it was one of the few scheduled in Los Angeles for the week of August 10, 2009.

Hear My Story: Join the Effort to Get Congress to Hear Us on Healthcare

This past week, MOMocrats launched a series called Hear My Story, highlighting the personal stories of women who support health insurance reform because they know the existing system is broken. And they've fallen through the cracks--or come close--and survived to tell about it. It's direct, concrete experience, painful and difficult--filled with the kind of worries that make your nights sleepless and long. Maybe you can relate.

We believe that health care reform is a women's issue. Why? Because well-being and caregiving are so closely linked.

Like it or not, much of the burden of caregiving falls on the shoulders of women. We might have legal responsibility for an aged parent or a mentally or physically disabled sibling. We might be parents ourselves. Whether a single woman or partnered, we are there for our women friends and community members to support, encourage, comfort, celebrate, and rabble rouse together...keeping each other sane.

We invite our readers and friends to join this effort. We invite you to write your own story, in our comments or on your own blog and link back to us.  Leave a link to your blog in the comments, and we will link to it here.  When we've collected enough stories, we plan to send them to congressional leaders and anyone else who we think will listen.

Write your story, either in the comments here or on your blog. Grab the following button for your post, and be sure to leave a comment with your link in it:

<a href="http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/"><img src="http://momocrats.typepad.com/hear.jpg/"> </a>

Know someone with a compelling story to tell? Ask them to join this effort, too.

We'll add your voices to the many who support healthcare reform in this country. Above the shouting and the made-for-TV drama, we believe that what remains are very human stories of people struggling to get the most basic necessity for themselves and their families--healthcare.  

Isn't it about time someone heard our stories?

Wonk 101: Mommy, Where Do Bills Come From?

MOMocrats is hosting a short series, Wonk 101, to cover some of the intricacies of the legislative process. Why? Well, while School House Rock remains the gold-standard for entertaining and informative, it does gloss over some of the weirder happenings. In an effort to make it easier to understand why there are three versions of health reform percolating in the House and Arlen Specter kept repeating, “There is no Senate bill,” we present this series. Got a burning question about something? Please leave a comment.

I thought this first post would cover how a bill gets written, introduced, and referred to a committee. And the inevitable exceptions to those rules. The next posts will focus on the chaos wonderment that is floor action and the conference process. Given the rage over health care reform, I thought it’d be good to provide a sort of blueprint for following the process.

When Two (or a Couple Thousand) People Love Each Other An Idea... From the thousands of constituent requests, meetings with lobbyists, and handed-down party priorities, a representative might cull a couple dozen ideas in which to actually invest staff time and draft a bill. Alternatively, an outside group might draft a bill and then shop it around to members. In either case, the actual drafting can take months as people duke it out over exact wording (think “It depends on what the meaning of “is” is.)

There are questions to be asked and answered: Will it alter (amend) or repeal existing laws or regulations? Where does it fit in existing federal statutes? Does the counsel’s office think it is constitutional? Is it likely to pass? Who can we partner with? How well funded is the opposition?

What happens next?