can be found in a most excellent diary at Daily Kos. The writer is a currently-serving, active-duty physician (ob/gyn, as a matter of fact). Please do read it.

Awhile back I wrote, trying to figure out how my adopted parasite had managed to have a better-than-(Wall-Street)-expected first quarter:

I have tried, and failed, to understand or find out what "disciplined pricing and operating improvements in senior and local group businesses and more favorable prior-period claims development" means. I'm especially curious about that "more favorable prior-period claims development" part. Sounds suspiciously like not paying old claims, to me. But you know how I am...

Dearie me, not suspicious enough, perhaps. Could this be part of what it means? Read more…

This is a bit of a follow-up to my recent post on the relative effectiveness of various means of pressuring Congresspersons. I got together with the local movers and shakers on single payer today and want to quickly pass along some things that got said about that, as well as on doing outreach, before I get back to the prevailing insanity of RL.

One very experienced person on the subject of letters to congresspersons: handwritten letters with local, personal details are extremely effective. Send them to the local office, not the DC office, to avoid the screening delay. Read more…

Here's a story I missed at the time (June 17th), brought up by a local activist in our meeting today: three health insurance CEOs refused, in a Congressional hearing, to limit rescissions to cases of fraud ("rescission" is the health care parasites' term for retroactively canceling your policy, nominally on the grounds that you failed to disclose a material fact about your health history): Read more…

I hope and expect many single payer activists will be in DC for the HCAN event this week, but even better, the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care is organizing a DC rally on Thursday, July 30th. And I can go! If nobody else in my family decides to go to the hospital! We're organizing a bus - if you live in a largish city not too far from DC someone is almost surely doing the same for you.

Celebrate Medicare’s 44th Birthday by showing Congress and President Obama the people, unions, doctors, nurses, seniors, faith groups, and Americans of every stripe support a single-payer system. Read more…

Witnesses, including Marcia Angell, M.D Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine Harvard Medical School, Geri Jenkins, R.N. Co-President California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Walter Tsou, M.D., M.P.H. National Board Advisor Physicians for a National Health Program, testify about proposals for a single-payer health care option before House HELP Subcommittee.

I have the video of it up at ePluribus Media. Read more…

Thank you for sharing (ugh) says DHHS after I post my single payer screed at the Dept. of Health and Human Services request for comments web site. True to form, the Administration solicits my "story or idea", doing its bit to stamp out the last vestiges of political analysis or independently organized activism in the populace. But they can't stop us writing for single payer, so there, nyah nyah.

Sebelius (nominally) writes:

Friends, Read more…

My local single-payer activist sends some happy news: Dr. Margaret Flowers of PNHP has been invited by Sen. Kennedy's office to testify at the Senate Hearing on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) on Thursday, June 11 at 3:00.

So, as she says, we can update the latest Healthcare-NOW! action alert: contact Sen. Kennedy's office (Phone: 202-224-4543 - Fax: 202-224-2417) and let them know we are glad to hear Dr. Margaret Flowers has been invited to testify on behalf of national single-payer healthcare reform and that we expect single-payer advocates to continue to have a seat at the table in meetings and senate hearings on health care reform. Read more…

Be active!

Writing a letter to the editor and getting it published turned out to be easier than I thought. The important points seem to include [UPDATE: I just found PNHP's LTE guidelines, with many sample letters]:

1. Respond to something recently published (so watch your local paper carefully for an opening). Read more…

This is an emergency. In addition to contacting your own representatives, Sen.
Max Baucus and Sen. Olympia Snowe are the ones we need to back off on their plans to eviscerate the public healthcare plan. Please take the time today to call or fax. (Real letters are the best possible thing.)

Also, it's time to squeeze Obama. We want him to veto any plan that arrives without a real public option. You might want to tell him what you think of this: Read more…

[Welcome, OFA readers! (The OFA page has no links for individual comments that I can find, so I can't cite back to the link. Therefore, I've included a screen dump of the thread below. -- lambert]

There were quite a few Organizing for America (OFA) health care organizing "kickoff" meetings in my area today. I chose to go to the one listed as sponsored by a slew of "your-organization-here for Obama" groups in order to do some outreach. Read more…

My local single payer activist sends the following:

The Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing titled “Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option” on Wednesday, June 10th at 10:30am in 2175 Rayburn House Office Building.

You may be able to watch via webcast.

She adds:

Contact C-SPAN and let them know we would like them to carry it. C-SPAN's Main Number is: (202) 737-3220. Read more…

More specifically, he wants to know your likes and dislikes in the admittedly dysfunctional American Healthcare system:

I am thinking that this is another opportunity to drive home the message of support for Single Payer!

Have at it right over here:

Senator Dodd asks: Is your health care working? What changes would you like to see? Add your ideas at YouTube's Senate Hub at http://youtube.com/senatehub

Democratic Senators are writing a major health reform bill. Rising costs are hitting families and businesses and now 46 million Americans live without health coverage. We need reform. Respond now with your ideas as the Senate writes health care legislation. You can help.

What are you still doing here? Read more…

I'm in Brooklyn for a month, in Park Slope. To give you some idea of what the political vibe of this nabe is, we are often referred to as "Berkeley East".

So, I'm walking down the main drag, and a fresh faced young college student comes up to me with a clipboard, saying,

"Do you have a moment for Barack Obama?"

I'm severely jet lagged. I've just stepped off a plane from Hong Kong. So for a second, I am frozen, without words. Have I time-warped back to June, 2008, when similarly fresh-faced young students were hired to work this strip for candidate Obama?

But no. It turns out that this group of canvassers is working the hustings to build public support for Obama's health care plan.

What the $%$# is this about? Read more…

come hold me tight
Kiss me my darling,
be mine tonight
Tomorrow will be too late,
it's now or never
My love won't wait.

Obama says health care this year - or never. Tells volunteers to pressure lawmakers before opportunity is lost forever.

"If we don't get it done this year, we're not going to get it done," Obama told supporters by phone as he flew home on Air Force One from a West Coast fundraising trip.

Obama's political organization, Organizing for America, invited campaign volunteers to a midday conference call to describe a nationwide June 6 kickoff for its health care campaign.

Nothing like ginning up the sales team to push vaporware.

It's been two weeks since the practice dome in Arlington fell in what was probably a microburst thunderstorm event, but may have been a small tornado. The NIST is looking into the collapse:

The engineers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology were in Irving this week talking to city officials and Cowboys representatives, among others, agency spokeswoman Gail Porter said late Thursday.

Everyone who was interviewed “has been cooperative,” Porter said. She said the engineers finished their work Wednesday.

Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple declined to comment on the federal inquiry.

According to coach Wade Phillips, the Cowboys' assistant coach, Rich Behm, whose back was broken Read more…

I have the rest of the town hall here.

I nominate Susie for his new speechwriter:

“Look, the economy is crashing and burning because health care costs are dragging down businesses and, as a result, families, and we’ve come up with a plan to fix that which won’t require you to spend one red cent out of pocket and won’t require you to fill out large amounts of paperwork. Our opponents are calling that socialism, government-run healthcare. Well, that’s exactly what they said in 1935 when President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security. That’s what they said in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson created Medicare. Read more…

ctblogger interviews "Juan Figueroa (President, Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut) and talked to him about the importance of HB 6600." Figueroa is pushing for a universal healthcare solution on the Connecticut state level. Read more…

The President sends me email and informs me that time is running out for single payer advocates to make ourselves heard:

The Vice President and I just met with leaders from the House of Representatives and received their commitment to pass a comprehensive health care reform bill by July 31.

You'll also be thrilled to know, I'm sure, that

...on Tuesday, leaders from some of America's top companies came to the White House to showcase innovative ways to reduce health care costs by improving the health of their workers.

Don't worry, things really have changed, and we can be "involved": Read more…

--or at least, get your advocacy into the Senate Finance Committee's permanent record.

In my email today I find this Single Payer Action Page:, which enables you to send single payer advocacy to your Congresscritters and the President, and " ALSO turns your comments into an actual pdf file and sends it as an attachment DIRECT to the Senate Finance Committee, meeting all their *restrictive requirements to make it part of the permanent record." Read more…

The intrepid Clark Newhall has set up another single-payer fax blast, this time to the Senate Finance Committee, plus the White House.

There is also an 800 number you can call (I haven't tried that yet) to leave a message for the President or for Baucus - 800-578-4171.

You can donate here to support these efforts.

As Mr. Newhall says:

It's free. It's easy. it's free and easy. Do it once. Do it twice. Do it until they drop.

Izvestia-on-the-Hudson "reports" today that Senator Schumer, "scorched by Republican opposition to the idea of a new public program like Medicare," (scorched? what're they gonna do, take away his birthday?) offers a "middle ground": a public plan based on a set of principles, the first of which is that it won't be supported by public funds:

The public plan must be self-sustaining. It should pay claims with money raised from premiums and co-payments. It should not receive tax revenue or appropriations from the government.  Read more…

See hipparchia's post for details. I just submitted my question. My link speed/reliability won't allow me to listen, so if anyone wants to report, that would be great.