Six Months of Health Care Reform: Get the Word Out!!

Do you know the significance of September 23 this year? It's the day that the first portions of the Affordable Care Act (signed into law six months ago) go into effect. How does this affect you? Do you know? Here are several websites that will help you to answer these questions. Click on healthcare.gov for a very understandable explanation of the changes that go into effect today. Additionally, piconetwork.org is dedicated to community organizing, especially as it pertains to getting the word out about the effect of the changes on lower income populations. Please spread the word. The piconetwork.org site contains posters, door hangers, and fact sheets to help you get the word out.

Health Care: A Message from NETWORK

Congress is confused about what to do about healthcare reform legislation. If there was ever a time that they need, and want, to hear from you, their constituents, it is now.

We at NETWORK, in collaboration with many other faith groups and healthcare advocates, urge everyone to call your representatives and senators this week to tell them they need to finish the job of passing healthcare reform legislation.

You can use the toll-free number 1-888-797-8717, made available by the Faithful Reform in Health Care coalition.

It is important to focus on representatives in the House right now, since the House must pass the Senate bill. But senators also need to hear from you because representatives will want them to improve the bill.

Please call your representative's office now. Then call back two more times to get to your senators' offices. Then ask other people to make the calls, too. Call all your members of Congress, even if you don't think it will make a difference. It will.

Here are some things you can say:

As one pastor in Kansas put it: one election half-way across the country has done nothing to change the desperate need of children and families in our community for affordable healthcare.

We don't expect a perfect bill but we need legislation now to move us toward fixing our broken healthcare system.

• Without reform, tens of thousands will continue to needlessly die each year for lack of access to care.
• Without reform, tens of millions will remain uninsured and without adequate access to a full range of services.
• Without reform, health costs will continue to grow much faster than wages.
• Without reform, many millions of hard-working people and their children will join the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured.
• Without reform, businesses, staggered by increasing employee health costs, will either drop coverage or will be unable to make needed investments.
• Without reform, the nation's economy - and its ability to create jobs - will suffer.

Now is the time for political courage, vision, leadership and faith.

All members of Congress need to hear this message.

Call now, and call again every day this week, toll-free 1-888-797-8717.

After you make the calls to your senators and representative, you can also send them an e-mail via http://capwiz.com/networklobby/issues/alert/?alertid=14585151&type=ML

(a copy will go to the President and the Secretary of Health and Human Services.)

The Bishops on Health Care

Click here for the full text of the letter (dated January 26, 2010) from Cardinal DiNardo, Bishop Murphy, and Bishop Wester to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Health Care Effort Must Continue

From Catholic News Service:

With the fate of the current health reform bills in doubt, the next challenge is to convince members of Congress not to abandon the health reform effort entirely, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston said January 22.

Click here for the rest of the story.

Health Care Reform

An update on the health care vote from Catholic Charities USA:

As you may know, the U.S. Senate passed a procedural measure on November 21 by a vote of 60 to 39. This mechanism, known as cloture, requires a 60-vote majority and is needed to continue debate on the health care reform legislation so it can be taken up for a final vote.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released language for "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (H.R. 3590) on November 18. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that this bill will cost $849 billion over 10 years and will reduce the federal deficit by $127 billion.

After the Thanksgiving recess, the Senate will resume debate on health care reform. Immigration, abortion, affordability, and the public plan option are expected to be highly contentious issues. Unlike the House bill, the Senate language prohibits undocumented immigrants from purchasing health insurance through the exchange, even when using their own money. The Senate bill would expand Medicaid eligibility to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, compared to 150 percent in the House-passed version. The House-passed version goes further in ensuring that no federal funds are used to cover abortion services compared to the current language in the Senate bill. It is expected that the House language on abortion will be offered as an amendment to the Senate bill.

Catholic Charities USA continues to work with the Catholic Health Association and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to ensure that no federal funds are used for abortion and that conscience protections are included in the final health care reform bill.

Catholic Charities USA will keep you updated on health care reform legislation.

Abortion and the Health Care Bill

As you may already be aware, the House narrowly passed its version of the health care plan late Saturday night. Abortion is being debated quite often in this attempt to pass health care legislation. Click here for Sunday's NY Times article, "Abortion was at Heart of Wrangling" and here for the letter sent to Congress by the US Bishops on Saturday. Click here to take action, thanking your Representatives and encouraging your Senators to make choices that promote the health and dignity of all human beings from conception to natural death.

Bishops on Health Care Reform

From the USCCB website:

In an extraordinary call to Catholics to prevent health care reform from being derailed by the abortion lobby, the United Sates Conference of Catholic Bishops has sent bulletin inserts to almost 19,000 parishes across the country.

"Health care reform should be about saving lives, not destroying them," the insert states. It urges readers to contact Senate leaders so they support efforts to "incorporate longstanding policies against abortion funding and in favor of conscience rights" in health reform legislation.
"If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed," it adds.
The insert highlights the Stupak Amendment from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) that, it states, "addresses essential pro-life concerns on abortion funding and conscience rights." "Help ensure that the Rule for the bill allows a vote on the amendment," the insert states. "If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed."

A dramatic ad of a pregnant woman notes that the Hyde Amendment, which passed in 1976, has prevented federal funds from paying for elective abortions, yet healthcare reform bills that are advancing violate this policy. The ad message: "Tell Congress: Remove Abortion Funding and Mandates from Needed Health Care Reform."

The insert also directs readers to www.usccb.org/healthcare.

Bulletin inserts were distributed to dioceses October 29, the day Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) unveiled the House health care reform bill and in expectation that they will show up in parishes in early November. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the USCCB; Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chair of the bishops’ Committee on Pro-life Activities; Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, chair of the Committee on Migration; and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville, Centre, New York, chair of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development urged fellow bishops to promote this campaign in their dioceses.

"The bishops want health care reform, but they recoil at any expansion of abortion," said Helen Osman, USCCB Secretary for Communications, who helped organize the campaign. "Most Americans don’t want to pay for other people’s abortions via health care either. This impasse on the road to reform of health care can be broken if Congress writes in language that assures that the Hyde Amendment law continues to guide U.S. federal spending policy."

The Catholic bishops have a long history of support for health care reform based on its teaching that health care is essential for human life and dignity and on its experience providing health care and assisting those without coverage.

Bishop Murphy Addresses Health Care Reform

Bishop William Murphy, chairman of Domestic Justice and Human Development for the U.S. bishops, addresses the urgent need for health care reform that is available to everyone and protects the life and dignity of every person. Click here to go to the USCCB website and view Bishop Murphy's video.

The Baucus Proposal

Rocco Palmo ("Whispers in the Loggia") has provided some information about Archbishop Raymond Burke's comments on the Baucus health care plan. He also includes links to comments made by Cardinal Renato Martino. Click here to go to Rocco's blog.

The Healing of America

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, by former Washington Post bureau chief, T.R. Reid, operates from an interesting premise. Reid presents himself and his symptoms (chronic shoulder pain) to physicians in the U.S., England, Japan, Germany, France, and India to see how treatment options would differ. However, Reid uses this experience to study how other industrialized countries are able to provide universal health care at a reasonable cost. From the product description on Amazon.com: In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own-including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada-where he finds inspiration in example. Reid shares evidence from doctors, government officials, health care experts, and patients the world over, finding that foreign health care systems give everybody quality care at an affordable cost. And that dreaded monster "socialized medicine" turns out to be a myth. Many developed countries provide universal coverage with private doctors, private hospitals, and private insurance. In addition to long-established systems, Reid also studies countries that have carried out major health care reform. The first question facing these countries-and the United States, for that matter-is an ethical issue: Is health care a human right? Most countries have already answered with a resolute yes, leaving the United States in the murky moral backwater with nations we typically think of as far less just than our own. The Healing of America lays bare the moral question at the heart of our troubled system, dissecting the misleading rhetoric surrounding the health care debate. Reid sees problems elsewhere, too: He finds poorly paid doctors in Japan, endless lines in Canada, mistreated patients in Britain, spartan facilities in France. Still, all the other rich countries operate at a lower cost, produce better health statistics, and cover everybody. In the end, The Healing of America is a good news book: It finds models around the world that Americans can borrow to guarantee health care for everybody who needs it.

Health Care Reform: A Note from the LCWR

Now that President Obama has delivered a strong speech to congress and the U.S. American people, it is critical that citizens, particularly people of faith, take action NOW even though many of us have been doing so during the August recess. The LCWR leadership issued a statement following the annual assembly. It is based on principles called for by the USCCB and CHA. The president of the UnitedStates has called for action. As you know, however, there are voices in the Senate which continue to resist meaningful health care reform. NETWORK urges calls to senators this week with the message that quality health care is a basic human right and it is incumbent on the Senate to support a health care reform bill that provides quality health care coverage for everyone at a cost that is affordable for everyone. If you listened to the president's speech last Wednesday, you heard him also affirm that health care for all is a moral imperative. Call senators inWashington via a toll-free number: 1-888-797-8717 (thanks to the UnitedChurch of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries and the General Board ofChurch and Society of the United Methodist Church.)

More on Health Care

Also from Catholic Charities:

Last week, Members of Congress resumed debate on health care overhaul after a series of contentious town hall meetings throughout the August recess. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, released a draft outlining his framework for health care reform . This outline does not propose a government funded public option. Instead, it would establish health care cooperatives, a system of nonprofit, member-run health insurance companies. Baucus' framework calls for an expansion of Medicaid to cover all people under 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

President Obama also outlined his vision for health care reform in a joint session of Congress on September 9. Many of the Obama Administration proposals are reflected in the Finance Committee framework. Insurers would be forbidden from refusing coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions or dropping coverage if an individual becomes ill. Both plans would mandate individual coverage and encourage businesses to offer coverage to their employees while providing some protections to small businesses. President Obama also called for a total cost of about $900 billion over 10 years, matching the estimated cost for the Finance Committee version.

To read the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops response to President Obama's speech, click here .

The other four committees of jurisdiction (Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; House Ways and Means, Education and Labor, and Energy and Commerce Committees) completed markups before the August recess. While Senator Baucus has stressed bipartisanship throughout the process, he now says that he will advance his proposal during the week of the 21st with or without Republican support. Legislative language is expected to be released this week.

A Site Worth Exploring

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference (PCC) maintains a very informative website on public policy, covering everything from Catholic education to health care to faith and politics. It's worth reading, even for those beyond the boundaries of PA, especially as the health care reform debate heats up. Click here to go to the PCC website.

The Bishops on Health Care Reform

Go to the USCCB website's health care reform page and read what the Bishops of the US have to say about health care reform. Be sure to scroll down to get all the resources on this page!

Health Care Reform

Let's begin our conversation on health care reform by reading the actual plan outlined by President Obama in his speech on Wednesday evening. Click here to access the White House website's text of the plan. If you scroll down on that page, you can receive the text of his remarks (or excerpts if you are in a hurry). The letter that Senator Kennedy sent to the President is also available on this page.