Three Cheers for Mark Schauer - and Us!

Our 7th District Congressman, Mark Schauer, continued his excellent work on behalf of constituents and the State of Michigan by voting for health care reform last night. (Please see my previous posts and www.whitehouse.gov for information about how the legislation will benefit us.)

This was a gutsy vote on Schauer's part. He's already been targeted by big-money, special interests who want to replace him with someone who will dance to their tune.

We are lucky to have a Representative who works as hard and has as much integrity as Mark Schauer. So, it's up to us Involved Voters to make sure Mark gets re-elected.

Isn't it about time?!

A year's worth of discussing, ideas, formulating legislation and debating; two health care reform bills, one passed by the House and one passed by the Senate with 60 out of 100 votes - more than a simple majority. Now it's time to wrap things up and give all of us who have been waiting (not always patiently) what we want.

Here's what the "reconciliation process", otherwise known as a majority vote on the budget-related elements of health care reform with debate but without filibustering, will deliver for us:

Hold Insurance Companies Accountable:

• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all new plans;
• Prohibit rescissions of health insurance policies in all individual plans;
• Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
• Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs;
• Establish a process for the annual review of unreasonable increases in premiums, requiring State insurance commissioners to work with the HHS Secretary and States.

Protect Consumers:

• Provide grants to States to support health insurance consumer assistance and ombudsman programs to help consumers;
• Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
• Require all insurance plans to use uniform coverage documents so consumers can make easy comparisons when shopping for health insurance;
• Establish an internet portal to assist Americans in identifying coverage options;
• Prohibit insurers from discriminating in favor of highly compensated employees by charging them lower premiums.

Ensure Affordable Choices and Quality Care:

• Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
• Create a temporary re-insurance program for early retirees;
• Require new plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
• Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
• Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
• Facilitate administrative simplification to lower health system costs.

The Republican's in Congress want to trash all these gains and start over! After a year of working to get this far! As an Involved Voter, ask yourself: Who are they working for?

Republican Support for Congressman Mark Schauer

Is Republican talking points crafter and Wall Street consultant Frank Luntz losing it?

He used a photo of our Democratic Congressman (7th District) Mark Schauer and his wife, Christine, who are small business owners in a memo on how to kill Wall Street reform by making it seem like it would hurt small business owners. (Luntz's specialty is calling things by names that grab people by the emotions and short circuit their reasoning ability - for example "death taxes" for the estate taxes that the very rich pay.)

Here's a link to the story on YouTube.

I think Luntz' goof is good for Mark. Lots of Republicans in the 7th admire how hard he works for people in the district and what a contrast his grasp of the issues is to his GOP predecessor's regurgitation of empty talking points. Schauer is a keeper. But, expect lots of Club for Growth and other big bucks to be flowing in to try to defeat him.

Let's let them know they can't buy Involve Voters' votes!

A Christmas Gift for America

The US Senate took a giant step toward health care reform this morning. Our Senators, Levin and Stabenow, voted with the rest of the Democratic Caucus to pass a bill that will:

-- Extend coverage to 31 million Americans, the largest expansion of coverage since the creation of Medicare.

-- Ensure that we can choose our own doctors.

-- Finally stop insurance companies from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition.

-- Make sure we will never be charged exorbitant premiums on the basis of our age, health, or gender.

-- Guarantee we will never lose our coverage just because we get sick or injured.

-- Protect us from outrageous out-of-pocket expenditures by establishing lifetime and annual limits.

-- Allow young people to stay on their parents' coverage until they're 26 years old.

-- Create health insurance exchanges, or "one-stop shops" for individuals purchasing insurance, where insurance companies are forced to compete for new customers.

-- Lower premiums for families, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, especially for struggling folks who will receive subsidies.

-- Help small businesses provide health care coverage to their employees with tax credits and by allowing them to purchase coverage through the exchanges.

-- Improve and strengthen Medicare by eliminating waste and fraud (without cutting basic benefits), beginning to close the Medicare Part D donut hole, and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund.

-- Create jobs by reining in costs -- fostering competition, reducing waste and inefficiency, and starting to reward doctors and hospitals for quality, not quantity, of care.

-- Cut the deficit by over $130 billion in the next 10 years.

It's a long list. But that's only because this bill represents the most significant health reform our nation has seen since the creation of Medicare.

There's another step to go before health care reform is a reality -- the Senate and House bills must be reconciled. So, as Involved Voters we know what we have to do. We must keep after our Senators and Representatives and let them know we want to see the bills combined in a way that serves the best interests of us all.

Wishing you all the blessings of the season and a happy and healthy 2010.

Term-limited as State Rep - Candidate for State House

Pam Byrnes has been untiring in her efforts to serve those of us in her district, the 52nd, and to address the needs of Michigan as a whole. She's built up an impressive store of knowledge about state government and uses it effectively. She is currently Speaker Pro-temp of the Michigan House of Representatives-- the choice of her colleagues.

All of this will be lost to us because of term limits unless we work to get Pam Byrnes elected to the State Senate from the 18th District. Our current State Senator is also term-limited and that creates an open seat.

There will be a coffee hour with Representative Byrnes Monday, November 2, 9:30 AM at the Chelsea Senior Center, 512 E Washington Street in Chelsea. It's another opportunity to talk with Pam about your concerns as Involved Voters and to support her in her plans to run for a seat in the State Senate.

The President's Summary of His Plan for Health Care Reform

Here, in the President's own words, is the essence of the plan he wants Congress to pass:
"It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don't. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government."

If you missed last night's address to a joint session of Congress, you can find the full text of President Obama's remarks at www.whitehouse.gov.

Now it's time for Involved Voters to let our Representatives and Senators know that we want them to pass health care reform that measures up to the President's standards - and do it now. Americans have been waiting for universal health coverage since the days of President Teddy Roosevelt. Reform is way overdue!

Why We Need an American Plan for Health Insurance Reform

We need a truly American plan for reforming health insurance. Such a plan would do the following:

* Reduce Costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals and families and they must be brought under control;
* Guarantee Choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option (like Medicare or the plan that federal employees have);
* Ensure Quality Care for All — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care.

People right here in our community and all over the country have signed on to these principles. They are the ones our President says he will use to evaluate whatever plans Congress comes up with.

You say you didn't vote for Barack Obama. Well, if you support these principles, consider it your civic duty to work for them anyway.

I believe that we Americans, at our best: care about people, take responsibility for ourselves and others, and strive to make ourselves and the world a better place. Working for health insurance reform is consistent with who we are because we believe in freedom and fairness for everyone, not just the powerful.

We need to make sure that health insurance reform helps our government fullfil one of its important moral missions - protecting us, its citizens. Right now we have a health care emergency and need to be protected from the excesses of profit-based insurance plans that ration care through the decisions of their profit-serving bureaucrats.

If we only have profit-based insurance plans to choose from, we'll continue to have overhead costs in the 20-30% range - the costs of adminstrative paperwork and decision-making focused on denying care and enhancing profits. For comparison, overhead for Medicare which is publicly administered runs about 4%. And you can bet the public servants working to manage Medicare are earning a whole lot less than the billions in compensation that some private insurance executives are raking in.

One way to look at it is that profit-based insurance companies are taxing us through a chunk of the premiums we and our employers pay (premiums average close to $13,000/year for a family of 4) - if we are lucky enough to have health insurance. When 20 to 30% of premium payments go to denying care and profiting from it, that constitutes a tax on those of us who have health insurance. This private tax decreases the availability of quality health care for us who are taxed and only benefits insurance company managers and investors.

We can't "vote out of office" the insurance companies who have taxed us in this way. A truly American Plan would offer us an alternative to this private "taxation without representation." We deserve a health insurance option that serves the public interest rather than private profits.

Please let your Senators and Representatives know you want a truly American plan for health insurance reform NOW. Ask them to ignore the lobbyists who represent profit-based health insurance and listen to you.

For more information on the economic impact of the health care crisis, go to the web site of the National Coalition on Health Care: http://www.nchc.org/facts/economic.shtml