The Stu-Pitts of Congress, and Women's Health Care From the Waist Up

Forgive me if I sound a little bitter despite being deeply moved by the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act this past weekend in the House. It IS a huge achievement and one-third of what we need to get the bill to President Obama to sign. I'm proud and grateful so many wonderful elected representatives who truly want to help Americans were able to move mountains and pass the bill.

It's just that, well, that was quick. We had a wonderful feminist moment there, didn't we, when we realized that women are treated differently than men by health insurers. We finally exposed the widespread practice of gender-rating--or disparate pricing by gender--for health insurance coverage that unfairly requires women to pay more than men with similar health status. We learned how eight states still allow insurers to consider domestic violence as a "pre-existing condition" to deny women coverage. We saw documentation of how common it is for women to be uninsured and underinsured whether it's employer-based coverage or self-procured, and how this made health insurance reform of particular interest to women. A quick statistic from the Commonwealth Study linked immediately above:

Six in ten women with moderate incomes (between $20,000 and $40,000) report being unable to pay medical bills, being contacted by a collection agency for unpaid medical bills, changing their way of life to pay medical bills or paying off medical debt over time, as did almost half (46%) of middle-income women.

Women rallying support around health insurance reform, I maintain, helped lift poll numbers for the public option and lift some of the curse extremist Teabaggers had tried to cast on the bill.

A Word on Gay Marriage

As everyone celebrates the one-year anniversary of the historic election of President Obama a lot of us, especially here in California are sadly reminded of another anniversary this week. The anniversary of the passing of Proposition 8, which was made even more painful after a similar vote passed in Maine on Tuesday. Writing this, I still can’t wrap my mind around the one burning question that keeps haunting my thoughts. Why?

Why are people voting on the right for other people to marry? Why do people care? And why are people so stupid? Yes, I said stupid. Sue me.

One of my favorite books in high school was The Crucible. I’ve always loved the subject of the Salem Witch Trials. The part of the story that was always so fascinating to me was the people in the community who were so easily taken advantage of. People who let their fear and ignorance become a tool that was used to make fools out of all of them.

This is perfect analogy to me of the poor fools who continue to vote against gay marriage in California and Maine and  every church that preaches against it. These people continue to have their own fear, their religion, and their ignorance used against them to take a stance against gay marriage.

I joke about these people and their ignorance with friends, but in truth, it’s not funny. In fact it breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart because for me when I think of gay couples and their families, I don’t see “gay couples.” I see my friends. I see family members. I see other PTA moms who fight with their kids to do homework. I see soccer games, I see vacations, and I see kids growing up in loving homes, just like my kids. No different.

So to you, the people who keep fighting the inevitable legalization of gay marriage, I ask you to face the sweet young faces of the kids who are being raised in these loving homes by loving gay & lesbian couples and tell them why their family is different. Why their family breakfasts, their trips to the supermarket, and their Saturday T-Ball games with the family are any different than yours.

Tell them, explain it to them. And then tell me, because I’m totally clueless.

This is proudly Meghan Harvey’s inaugural post at MOMocrats. When she’s not working hard to find a cure for ignorance she can also be found blogging on her personal blog, Meg’s Idle Chatter. 

I Hate to Break it to the GOP, but We ARE in Our Place!

Oh those crazy people at the Republican National Congressional Committee!!  When there's something they're not happy about, they can't help themselves from saying something silly!

The RNCC tried to chide Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with this:

If Nancy Pelosi's failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan, taxpayers can only hope [General] McChrystal is able to put her in her place.

Her comeback?

I'm signing up for the Speaker's next class on political zingers!

30 Senate Democrats Stand Firm for a Public Option in Letter

Thank you, Democratic Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Tom Udall (D-NM), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Roland Burris (D-IL), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Al Franken (D-MN), Bob Casey (D-PA), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Ted Kaufman (D-DE), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Bob Menendez (D-NJ),  John Kerry (D-MA), Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Paul Kirk (D-MA), and thank you Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont.

Today, by signing a letter written by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown supporting the inclusion of a strong public option in the Senate health insurance reform bill — a measure of health care reform that the majority of Americans support — you stood up on behalf of the American people and put the interests of ordinary working American families ahead of the interests of multimillion dollar insurance companies. You put people ahead of profits, put principles ahead of politics, and brought the United States of America one step closer to joining the other developed nations of the world in recognizing access to basic health care as a human right that should be granted to all of a nation's people.

You promoted the general welfare, just like the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution says our government should. Your mothers should be proud.

The MOMocrats extend our gratitude, and encourage more Senators to join you.

Readers, if you support the public option like nearly two-thirds of your fellow Americans, and your Senator has not yet signed this letter, please encourage him or her to do so.

Full text of the letter after the jump:

Just Being Alive Will Soon be a Pre-existing Condition

Domestic violence isn't a subject I talk about much, but it's something I feel very strongly about because I have a very personal connection to the topic.

I was a victim of domestic abuse.

Many, many years ago I was married for a very short time when I was an incredibly young (19) and stupid college student (while 19 might be a good age for some to marry, it was not a good age for me).

I was smart enough, however, to get out of that very brief marriage quickly before I suffered too many injuries. But it was scary -- I had bruises from being pushed down stairs and I was anxious about lying to cover up why there was a big hole in the wall (where my ex-husband kicked it in in a rage), among other things. When he pulled a butcher knife on me when I said I was leaving, I really knew it was the right choice to save my life. But I was terrified that he would come after me and hurt me more. He tried, but I was lucky that I had friends who sheltered me and kept me safe, even when I had to go to work.

Strategies to Pass a National Public Option/State Single Payer Health Care Plans: Will They Work?

Lately there's been a lot of angst from liberals and moderates who favor health insurance reform regarding the fate of a public option* in Congress. What's missing is a sense of how national policy debates intersect with state efforts to reform the provision of health care.

Listen up if you live in the states of California, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, or Ohio (pdf).

Listen up if you're belong to or agree with over 572 union organizations nationwide who support single-payer health care at a national level, also known as H.R. 676.

Listen up if you've gotten increasingly concerned over the mainstream media reporting on reputed White House wavering on the public option.*

MOMocrat CityMama gave an excellent overview of the situation which I encourage you to revisit and plunder for talking points WHEN YOU CALL OR FAX your representative. You are making those calls, right?

I wanted to give a little space here to review what's happening on the state level, and encourage you to mobilize there as well.

Re-Fired Up: A Health Reform Vigil in St. Louis

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a town hall meeting held by my Senator, Claire McCaskill, in a rural Missouri town on the outskirts of St. Louis.

It depressed me.

Health care reform opponents screamed and heckled and interrupted the Senator, again and again. Some health care reform supporters got frustrated and started yelling back. At one point, a white man in the audience snatched a poster of Rosa Parks from a black woman in attendance and crumpled it and ripped it and stomped on it and shoved the woman when she tried to take it back from him. The man cited the "no sign or banners" rule imposed by the university hosting the event as his defense as security escorted both him and the woman he had taken the sign from out of the building; meanwhile, several anti-health reform protesters blatantly displaying "Don't Tread on Me" Gadsen flag banners were allowed to stay without incident. That depressed me.

A fellow blogger was called a "babykiller" for wearing a pink Planned Parenthood t-shirt and had a racial slur tossed at her to boot for being black while wearing said t-shirt. That depressed me.

A man standing outside with the St. Louis Tea Party protesters held a sign equating President Obama to Hitler:

(Photo courtesy of Michael Bersin from Show Me Progress.)

That made me want to weep for education, America, manufacturers of cheap men's hair dye, and all humanity.

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. 

What's a Good Source for Understanding the Health Care Bill?

Now THAT's the $64,000 question, isn't it? But that's what my friend Susan (aka WhyMommy) from Toddler Planet asked me and I didn't have a good answer at the ready.

Sure, you can read the original 615 page bill if you're battling insomnia. Oh, and don't forget to search for the boxes upon boxes of amendments that have gotten tacked on, too. Aside from the actual language of the bill, there are some things important to understand in this battle -- and yes, it is a battle.

Insurance companies, and the legislators who take money from them, want you to think they're protecting competition by opposing the current legislation. They are not. Competition should be a great thing, right? It's supposed to keep prices down and keep companies honest. That works unless you have an industry that's become a monopoly. Like cable TV and satellite radio companies, insurance doesn't have a lot of competition and at this stage of the game they're not trying to protect competition, they're afraid of losing money. If they really want competition, why would they be afraid of another option -- public or otherwise?

The Apathetic Middle: How Virginia Dems Will Lose the Governor's Mansion

The word on the street is that Democrats are being encouraged not to challenge other Dems in primaries.  While I'm not in favor of strong arming good candidates into "waiting their turn," I understand why the Dems are doing this. It seems that they've finally figured out that nasty Democratic primaries just help the Republicans in the general election. 

Take for example what's happened here in Virginia.  A Democrat, albeit a conservative Dem, has held the Governor's mansion for the last two election.  This year, there was no clear cut Democratic successor, even though the Republicans managed to narrow it down to Bob McDonnell and only Bob McDonnell.  We had three contenders in the Democratic primary: Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran. 

From the beginning, the consensus was that Creigh Deeds didn't have much of a chance.  Terry McAuliffe would get the out-of-state big money, Brian Moran would get the more liberal backing of Northern Virginia and the grass roots activists.  Creigh Deeds?  He's a nice guy, but conventional wisdom said he was too conservative and couldn't be aggressive enough to win the primary.