The Health Care Debate. They Talk. We Organize.

Guest Blog by Jeff Blum, Executive Director, USAction (FCAN is an affiliate)

As anyone near a newspaper, TV or computer knows by now, House Republicans are voting today on whether to repeal the new health-care law. For Republicans, it’s largely theater. They know the repeal effort will never survive the Senate or President Obama’s veto pen. For us, it’s an opportunity. A chance for us to remind Americans about the urgent need for health care reform. Across the country, USAction affiliates are doing just that -- a sampling of those activities across the country: Maine People’s Alliance delivered 2,600 postcards to the newly elected Tea Party-backed governor, opposing repeal and demanding that the state not join a lawsuit challenging the new law. Tennessee Citizen Action held a press conference at the state capitol that featured stories of people who desperately needed health care reform. It drew saturation coverage. ProgressOhio mounted a spirited defense of health care reform, visiting members of Congress, making aggressive use of social media to rally supporters of the law and even delivering an inch-and-a-half thick book of comments from ProgressOhio members to public officials’ offices, sharing their personal stories about why the law is desperately needed. Penn Action's Stacie Ritter was featured on more than 60 NBC affiliate TV stations across the country, while an Associated Press photo of Brian Rothgery of Wisconsin Citizen Action appeared in newspapers as far away as Atlanta, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and San Antonio. Indeed, in the approximately 30 states where activists are on the ground this week defending health care reform, almost half of the activities are being led or co-sponsored by USAction affiliates. We’re asking people to think about what happens if the health care law is repealed. It would mean: · Dropping you from coverage because you get sick. · Denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. · Kicking recent college grads off their parents’ plans. · Robbing small businesses of tax credits for offering coverage to workers. · Taking prescription drug money out of seniors’ pockets. There’s more – much more -- but you get the drift. But this is not just about health care and the reforms we fought so hard to pass. It’s about our future. We know that health care reform will create 250,000 to 400,000 jobs a year over the next decade. We know it will bring down the deficit. We know it will lower the home foreclosure rate – my colleague, Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, estimates that repeal would lead to nearly 900,000 Americans a year being forced into home foreclosure because of catastrophically high medical bills. But most importantly, we know that health care is a right. As the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” We are USAction. We are the true majority. Thank you for all that you do. Jeff Blum Executive Director USAction