On June 25, 2009 thousands of citizens from all across the U.S. came together at the nation's capital with a single message for Congress: "Health Care Can't Wait!"
Continue reading for more photos from the Connecticut groups' trip to D.C. and videos from the CT Health Care Town Hall meeting at the Capitol Visitor's Center.
President Barack Obama spoke to over 2,000 physicians at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in Chicago, and explained why we health care reform must be our top priority.
The President explained the importance of a public option to meaningful health care reform (emphasis added):
The first thing we need to do is protect what’s working in our health care system. Let me repeat – if you like your health care, the only thing reform will mean is your health care will cost less. If anyone says otherwise, they are either trying to mislead you or don’t have their facts straight.
If you don’t like your health coverage or don’t have any insurance, you will have a chance to take part in what we’re calling a Health Insurance Exchange. This Exchange will allow you to one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose a plan that’s best for you and your family – just as federal employees can do, from a postal worker to a Member of Congress. You will have your choice of a number of plans that offer a few different packages, but every plan would offer an affordable, basic package. And one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that [we can] force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.
SustiNet has passed the state House and Senate and will arrive on the Governor's desk very soon. Please add your name to the call for Governor Rell to sign SustiNet into law.
We need your signature on the petition, but we also need you to reach out to your friends, family, and networks and ask them to sign it as well. Time is short -- we want to have all of our signatures ready by Monday, June 15.
Once Governor Rell has the bill, we will deliver your signatures to her office. Tell Governor Rell -- Connecticut needs health care we can all count on!
Senator Dodd is a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and authored an op-ed published in the New London Day on the critical importance of health care reform.
In it, Sen. Dodd uses the overwhelming turnout at each of his four CT Prescriptions for Change events -- in particular, the first, which was held early on a cold Friday morning in January -- as evidence of the tremendous will to see real health care reform enacted. (Video from all four forums is available on the CCAG site: East Hartford, Danbury, New London, and Derby).
Health care costs are rising faster than our economy is growing, crushing family budgets and businesses alike. Already Americans spend 18 cents of every dollar on health care. If we continue down this path, that figure will double by 2040. This week, we learned that 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies were caused by medical problems. And today, nearly half of all home foreclosures are attributable, in part, to financial issues stemming from medical costs.
We've clearly reached a tipping point. Today, some 46 million Americans are without health insurance - including more than 322,000 in Connecticut; millions more have insurance that costs too much and covers too little. Meanwhile, premiums and out-of-pocket costs for individuals and families alike continue to skyrocket. Here in Connecticut, they're up 42 percent over the last eight years alone.
That's not only unacceptable - it's completely unsustainable.
The most significant line in this op-ed, however, is Sen. Dodd's statement of unequivocal support for a public option (emphasis added):
For me, the bottom line is that we need to preserve the ability for people to choose their own doctors, hospitals, and insurance plans. If you like what you have, you can keep it; if you don't, you'll finally have affordable options available to you. In my view, that must include a public health insurance option in addition to private options.
It seems that Sen. Dodd has become more fully convinced of the merits of the public health option, though he has liked the idea for awhile.
SustiNet and the Healthcare Partnership bill recently passed the state House and Senate by wide margins, and received a fair amount of local media coverage.
Christine Stuart at CT News Junkie reports on Saturday's passage of both bills in the state Senate -- SustiNet by a vote of 23-12 and the Healthcare Partnership bill by a vote of 21-12:
Health care advocates will turn their lobbying efforts toward Rell in the next few weeks as the bill makes its way to her desk.
“Few elected leaders ever get such a perfect opportunity to enact major reform,” Juan A. Figueroa, president of Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, said Saturday in a press release. “The House, the Senate, and the people of Connecticut have delivered one such defining moment to Governor Rell.”
CCAG Executive Director Tom Swan has an op-ed in the Connecticut Post about the recently passed Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which was sponsored by Chris Dodd, Connecticut's senior Senator.
Tom Swan speaks about how the unfair practices of credit card companies affect CCAG members and others in Connecticut. [March 13, 2009]
The bill puts an end to absurdly high fees that drive families further into debt, requiring that penalties be proportional to the violation and prohibiting issuers from charging fees when customers simply pay by phone or unknowingly exceed their credit limit.
It prevents credit card companies from charging you if they delayed crediting your payment and requires far better disclosure of card terms and conditions.
It includes tough protections for the particularly vulnerable demographic that has been a cash cow for credit card companies in recent years: young people and students.
Measure Would Guarantee Medical Coverage To Any State Resident
HARTFORD - The state House of Representatives took a major step Wednesday night toward resolving an issue that has long defied a solution -- guaranteeing health care coverage to tens of thousands of Connecticut residents without health insurance.
After a debate that lasted 2½ hours, the House voted largely along party lines, 107-35, for a landmark bill aimed at achieving universal health care in Connecticut by creating a public insurance pool that anyone could join, regardless of their health history.
The pool, backed by a coalition of social activists, religious leaders and Democratic lawmakers, would be based on the existing pool for state employees, and is designed to compete with -- not replace -- private insurance plans.
It is still not clear when, or if, the so-called SustiNet plan could become law.
Consumer advocates blamed skyrocketing health insurance premiums in Connecticut and other states on the industry's mergers and too little competition in a report Wednesday that calls for a new public health plan to vie with private insurers.
Insurance officials immediately challenged the data and conclusions of the report from Health Care for America Now, a coalition of organizations for reform, and called it politically motivated.
"It's a race to the bottom with these insurance companies," said Phil Sherwood, deputy director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, which is part of the coalition. "They make their money by charging more and providing less."
The report, released in different versions for each state Wednesday, came just as Connecticut's House of Representatives began debating major reform proposals that call for large insurance pools to compete with existing insurers.
Above: Audience member Dr. Lee speaks about the public health option.
At the fourth forum of Senator Chris Dodd's Connecticut Prescriptions for Change tour, which took place at Griffin Hospital in Derby, he was joined by White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.
You can watch other videos from the event below (click here), and also check out our videos from the first, second, and third Connecticut Prescriptions for Change forums at these links:
For more information about the Connecticut Prescriptions for Change tour, contact Senator Dodd’s office at 860-258-6940 or email ctrx4change@dodd.senate.gov
State lawmakers got an overview on Monday of how the health policy debate in Washington may impact Connecticut residents and the state's bottom line.
Connecticut Congressman Chris Murphy sits on the House committee that will consider any health reform legislation. He told lawmakers the prospects for some kind of universal health care bill are better than they've been in decades.
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