Hey Congress: Get on board!

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Starting today, Health Care for America Now is running ads in Washington, DC, reminding Congress and decision makers here in our nation’s capital exactly what happened on November 4th. Here’s the ad:


Barack Obama ran on health care, plain and simple. He repeated the message we’ve highlighted above all over this country in speech after speech. In the final month of the campaign, he signed on to Health Care for America Now’s vision for reform and spent 86% of his advertising budget talking about health care. And Barack Obama proceeded to win the November 4th election by 7 points.

There is no such thing as a clearer mandate.



Already, Congress is making positive steps towards enacting Obama and Health Care for America Now’s vision for reform. But there is always a need to keep the pressure on and remind our politicians that we sent them to Washington for a reason, and we expect our wishes to be carried out.

Tomorrow, the Senate Finance Committee (which controls federal revenues and as such will be instrumental in passing any health care reform legislation) will be holding a hearing on health care and the economy. This is an important first step towards building momentum for quality, affordable health care for all in Congress.

Just yesterday, the New America Foundation released a report making clear the cost of doing nothing on health care will be a major burden to our economy:

The economic cost of failing to fix our broken health care system is greater than the upfront expense of comprehensive health reform. In 2006, our economy lost as much as $200 billion because of the poor health and shorter lifespan of the uninsured. This is by most estimates as much as, if not greater than, the public costs of ensuring all Americans have quality, affordable, health coverage. The economies in California, Texas, and Florida suffer most from productivity loses stemming from the uninsured. Yet, Delaware’s economy loses more per uninsured person — over $6,800 per uninsured resident.

As health care costs continue to grow faster than wages, health insurance will become more and more unaffordable for more and more American families every day. The financial burdens associated with health care and health insurance will only get worse over time without action.The cost of the average employer-sponsored health insurance plan (ESI) for a family will reach $24,000 in 2016. This represents an 84 percent increase over 2008 premium levels. Under this scenario, we estimate that at least half of American households will need to spend more than 45 percent of their income to buy health insurance.

Clearly, this is a crisis, and one that needs to be solved now.

So, please take a moment and email the members of the Senate Finance Committee. Tell them your story. Tell them why you think health care reform needs to be done in 2009. Tell them to stand up and fight for quality, affordable health care for all, now.

Thank you for your efforts. They really make a difference.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)




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