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Obama's Online Health Care Drive: Epic Fail?
OFA launched a new email and petition drive on Tuesday afternoon, ratcheting up pressure on Congress to pass the President's health care plan. Here at Huffington Post, Nico Pitney reports on the move's political significance:
A first shot, of sorts, is being fired in the Obama-era battle for health care reform. Organizing for America, President Obama's political arm, is blasting out an email to its massive list of supporters urging them to join an "Organizing for Health Care" campaign.
A DNC official says the message is significant because it is "the first email" that is "going out from the OFA and DNC lists organizing for health care." The declaration drive will culminate, the official added, in a supporter list that organizers "can deliver to members of Congress." But there are some problems here.
It is early, but so far, these OFA legislative "organizing" efforts run the risk of being boring, vague and redundant.
The drive is boring and thus more likely to falter, as Internet strategist and professor Zephyr Teachout wrote, because the goals are predictably top-down (support the President's agenda) and somewhat propagandistic (because he said so).
Then, click through your inbox and you'll find the new petition is almost comically vague. The three goals are: Reduce cost; Provide choice; and Ensure affordable care for all. It is hard to see any need to demonstrate official public support for those general principles.
Finally, asking millions of Obama's strongest supporters to simply sign petitions, regardless of their location, ambition and ability, is surely redundant and probably wasteful.
Take an activist in a Democratic House district in a Blue state -- why should she be pressuring Congress if her representatives are already backing Obama's plan? (If anything, those members would be willing to go further towards single-payer.) A blanket national petition drive is redundant for many supporters, and it fails to target people in the areas where more visible pressure is desperately needed. Imagine, for example, if OFA specifically rallied its Republican and independent voters in the 37 G.O.P. districts that Obama won last year -- areas that endorsed his platform but are still represented by Republican incumbents. Imagine a Pennsylvania-focused campaign to make health care a bigger issue for Arlen Specter -- or imagine if OFA actually solicited grassroots views from local Obama supporters before the President endorsed the ex-Republican's candidacy. You get the idea.
OFA's current organizing emphasis is at least inefficient, even on its own top-down terms. (The health care experiments on the government side during the transition period, to be fair, were more bottom-up.) And judged against broader values, it obviously fails to tap the ambition, ability, sophistication and creativity that bubbled up through more open networks during Obama's campaign.
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Ari Melber last wrote about Organizing for America in the article "Obama for America 2.0?" This post was first published at PDF.
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Hmmm...
Health Care for All Uninsured Americans is Simple!
1) Merge Medicare with Medicade into a single "Income Based" system.
2) Allow insurance companies to offer "Medigap" coverage to all participants.
As for Funding...
1) Changing from an "Emergency Treatment" to a "Preventative Care" system will save local communities billions, maybe even trillions of taypayer dollars!
2) Small business will be able to compete globally and hire additional taxpaying employees!
3) Wealthy seniors will pay their fair share!
4) The tremendous burden on future generations will be greatly reduced!
"It is early, but so far, these OFA legislative 'organizing' efforts run the risk of being boring, vague and redundant." -- Early? It started yesterday afternoon. Do you order meals at restaurants and judge them based on the beverage? "It's early, but based on the iced tea, I think my lunch runs the risk of being cold and not so sweet."
Oh thank you. I had written a post last night where I was fussin' and cluckin' and naturally it didn't make it through - I suspect it was the fussin' and cluckin'. But you just said, short and sweet, what was bothering me. Even the headline - "Epic Fail?". It's a conclusion reached and an article wrapped around that conclusion. How can you conclude anything about something released 24 hours ago? The article itself was only 12 hours after and we're straight to a failure of epic proportions!
This writer is a very good one. I like his stuff. But this is not a good road to take. It's an approach that is driving our news and people's opinions about everything. Creating a problem to write about.
I thought the single -payer option so all could have health care was the goal. You're right, the objectives outlined in the petition are vague; not one mention of a public option.
I, being slow to learn, went ahead and signed the petition kind of assuming that the public option was what was meant by "choice". I didn't make a donation though, felt I needed to wait about that, maybe my signature didn't go through.
Anyway when I went back and read the petition again I realized I was unsure of what I was signing. Above all, we need the public option in the health care reform. Without it, it's just more of the same.
I thought the public healthcare option was what Obama was all about. It's pretty much why I voted and worked for him.
What now Mr. President
The detail of the Chrysler Retiree situation is deplorable to say the least!
Under terms of the deal, the UAW trust would get representation on Chrysler’s board of directors.
In return, the UAW agreed to cut wages, overtime pay opportunities, and vacation days for current employees, and to the elimination of the job bank that continues to pay workers after they are terminated, according to Business Week.
Chrysler’s UAW retirees will also lose their dental and vision insurance benefits.
With all the Billions of dollars and millions of options to choose from, the Us Government, UAW and Chrysler have decided that Chrysler can be saved by taking the teeth out of the mouths of Chrysler’s retirees.
The President has decided that the retirees don’t have a need for vision in this dark economy.
The UAW Retiree Trust managers have sold out the retirees for a seat on the Board of Directors.
They gave away 5.3 Billion dollars owed to the retirees for this seat on the Board.
With their eyesight failing and their teeth falling out they ask this question Mr. President”What is your Plan for us”?
I have three questions to ask of this administration and my President:
1. How much did Chrysler actually save by cutting the vision and dental benefit to the Retirees?
2. What is your specific plan for these individuals and their dependents and what replacement services have you identified for them?
Spouse of a Retiree
I just read this vague opinion piece.
Healthcare reform is at the top of list, for many Americans.
Their need for better and more affordable healthcare potions will keep them engaged in the debate.
You missed Ari's point. We aren't getting a debate. We're getting simplistic platitudes.
Perhaps we are getting far worse than platitudes.
I see it as theater.
First we get the usual chorus of renegade free thinking Democrats branded as:
A. Blue dogs
B Centrists
C Moderates
D from a conservative district
This group always shows up whenever health care is on the table, and they fight it siding with Republicans. Back to Carter, during the Clinton years and now again.
Of course we need to be sold on the idea that Obama is trying his level best to heard cats`` and he only has so much control`` and next time we will vote out those nasty blue dogs....
The simple truth is that the budget was passed by Obama without one single Republican vote, so clearly Democrats can be brought in line and to vote as a team.
The massive stimulus bill was originally rejected by many Democrats who were then bullied and beat into submission or `rewarded` for backing the stimulus.
The game here is to trick people into thinking that Obama is trying hard to get us health care, but he just couldn`t quite get enough Democrats to vote for it.
People paying attention have seen this move at least 3 or 4 times already. It ends with us still having no decent health care. This new version featuring a host of new actors promises more of the same.
I don't need to be entertained. I need to be kept informed and told what I can do to help. Obama doesn't have to beg me to help take care of my country. I want to. He told us from the beginning that Washington would be the same old junk if we didn't stay engaged and help him get legislation through congress. It does no good to sit home and complain about Washington. Put your money and your feet where your mouth is. It's a plus if it's also entertaining, but we aren't children who have to be bribed to eat our veggies and entertained with bright colors in order to behave ourselves. The men who gave their lives at the Alamo and all the other heroes throughout American history were not entertained. They did what was necessary to take care of America. It's time to draw a line in the sand and step up to it. It's time for ordinary people to be heroes because if we don't we really could lose the character and ideals that our beautiful experiment of a country was built on. There are people, who are so engulfed in fear and greed and anger that they would throw it all away. We hear Dick Cheney speak for them nearly every day on national television. How dare we not speak up for America?
The problem is that Obama is not informing us or leading us at all. Instead, he's obscuring the truth, and thereby helping to obstruct change.
What does he want? He's basically asking us to sign a petition that says we want some kind of multi-payer health care reform.
In the first place, that's disingenuous and wrong.
The majority of Americans want single payer.
And if we had to have multi-payer (and we do not, and any Democrat who says so is a stooge for AHIP), we would want the most efficient open-enrollment public option possible, not one handicapped and corrupted and made inefficient to be "fairer" to the cartels.
Yet Obama's vague position evidently would embrace even a multi-payer "reform" with no open-enrollment program at all!
Harry S Truman fought his hardest against the cartels, and by dint of tactics that would make Rove blush the cartels frustrated the desires and needs of the majority of Americans, who wanted single payer then, as they do now. That was before the cartels became the obvious vampire they are now. The arguments against the cartels are a hundred times stronger than they were under Truman. 50 MILLION Americans have no health insurance at all. Millions more are undersinsured. Half of all bankruptcies are caused by out-of-pocket health care costs. People are deseprate for change--18,000 Americans die a year--yet Obama refuses to fight.
This isn't leadership, this is a disgrace!
A majority of Americans support single payer.
A majority of physicians support single payer.
Yet the Democrats in Congress refuse to consider it.
You'd think that the President would step in--if Congress won't represent us, you'd think he would.
Hah--what a joke.
Melber's exactly right. How the hell are we supposed to get excited about Obama's lowest-common-denominator stand? If he said, "hey, what America really wants and needs is single payer, get behind me to force Congress to do what's right," he'd have our enthusiastic support. But instead, he doesn't even insist on an open-enrollment public insurance option--and evidently he won't lift a finger (or raise his voice) to prevent conservative Dems from hopelessly handicapping such a program even if it is included (a la Schumer).
It's a foregone conclusion that Democrats are going to do universal healthcare. That's part of their mandate. If they don't do it, they're toast. So for Obama to push LCD is the opposite of leadership. He should be fighting the private health insurance cartel. He should be mobilizing the power of the People against obstructionist Democrats in Congress.
Instead, he's made it plainer than ever that he is not a progressive, will not act like a leader, and will happily sell us out to the cartels.
For profit healthcare is what has destroyed our healthcare system. Let's get all these healthcare companies out of wallstreet. If we must have insurance companies, they should be non-profit. Most importantly, all Americans should be able to receive basic healthcare with 0 cost. We're aready shoveling billions to the insurance company and getting 0 in return for it. Why not take a chance on National health care? What do we have to lose, at this point?
I'm not OK with taking a chance and I have a lot to lose. My wife has chronic dibilitating pain. We spend a lot of money on health insurance, but the results are excellent. Before she received treatment she had to use crutches just to get around, now she is completely normal. Picture your wife in so much pain she can't get out of bed and that condition is permanent. This can happen to anyone. We all have a lot to lose here. Consider carefully what these politicians are doing.
The insurance company didn't provide the care for your wife. The health care provider provided the care. All the insurance company did was write the check--something a government program could do much more cheaply.
When a private health insurance company pays for care, it consumes a big percentage--15 to 20%--of every dollar in premiums on administrative costs--overhead, marketing, excessive corporate executive remuneration, and above all, PROFIT. In contrast, Medicare's administrative costs are 3%, and the Canadian single payer system's cost is 1%. To give you some idea of the health Canadians enjoy, their live expectancy is 2 years--TWO YEARS--longer than ours.
If we eliminated the private health insurance cartel, we would save $350 BILLION A YEAR in administrative costs--enough to insure the 50 million uninsured.
So stop your fear-mongering.
That your wife has debilitating pain is no reason to deny health care to 50 million Americans. Don't you think any of them have debilitating pain? What about the ones who have cancer?
Your position is obscenely selfish and greedy and unpatriotic, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Agree with Melber, jonbw, Freeia2, et. al.; disagree with Teo, et. al.
Although this effort may qualify as a mulligan, the fact is that the e-mail is less compelling than asking "who'd you rather throw a pie at: limbaugh, cheney, or o'reilly?" Or "what is better, pie, cake, or ice cream?" At least my two vacuous questions make you think for a second.
Had the e-mail been a way to gauge what people think about single-payer vs. 'public option', cost controls, willingness to phase out or abruptly shut down health insurance (sic) companies, is 2% growth ok with you?, and provide links to sites which have scientific studies regarding efficacy of single-payer and hybrid systems, then it could have been a home run. "Choose a position and tell your Congressmen/women what you think - but get involved!" is a winning approach.
Responses to this sort of tact would have been informative to the administration. Bandaid solutions based solely on sloganeering are the hallowed ground of the Republican "Freedom Fries" Party... allegedly the antithesis of what the Obama administration was to be. The fact that they chose such a timid path shortchanges everyone.
Give us (the people) more credit than this! This past election has opened our eyes, we're not going back to sleep on this or any other issue. I received my email this morning and will take the appropriate action to make my voice heard as I'm sure many will.
Sometimes its OK to be positive and motivated. There are too many forces about that want to keep us in the dark, scared and unheard from. This will not happen to me!
Do you even know what single payer is?
Do you understand why Harry S Truman and his wife were the first Americans to be enrolled in Medicare? Don't you see any symbolism there?
Do you know anything about the historic values and drive of the Democratic party, subverted and destroyed by the Centrists?
Do you have any conception how the President and Congress are selling us out?
If your eyes are open, why don't you use them to do some research?
Amen!
Content, a good plan and the details are as important as the orgainzing.
I want to support Obama on Health Care, but a cut of 1.5% of the growth of any industry that generally raises their costs as much as 3-4 times the actual rate of inflation is wholly inadequate, especially since we already pay $8,000 each for mediocre health care. This negotiation reinforces and mandates price increases of health care during a depression and a time when housing prices and savings are cut in half.
Next, the organizing for health care group wants us to sign a nebulous statement that includes cheaper health care, but ignores that this will be paid for almost 100% by the people using the health care by raising taxes as opposed to attacking the well-known 30% waste in health care dollars today.
Taking the waste out of health care and holding the line on costs can save One Trillion dollars every year today and every year without raising the costs to the consumer one cent. This should be the goal as opposed to the giveaway a nebulous one Trillion in savings because we will not increased the costs as fast as before.
This is financial and public relations trickery of the worst kind. Deplorable at best. Evil and criminal at worst. What are we doing? Framing the issue around totally disingenuous terms? Why?
If you would like to help pressure our government for single payer health care please join our voting bloc at:
http://www.votingbloc.org/Health_Bloc.php
Our elected officials are excluding single payer from the health care debate but they work for us. If we use our votes to hold them accountable on this issue we can make it happen.
The enthusiasm leading up to his election in November was about making history. That's why the enthusiasm won't last. History has already been made, and as the Pres. said on election night change HAS come to America.
Holy cow! Was it enough for you that we just elect him or were you hoping that he'd be able to fulfill the hopes we all dared to dream with him? He never lied to us. He told us from the beginning that if we didn't pay attention, stay engaged and help him squeeze congress and get the word out to our neighbors, that everything would slide back into the same old Washington junk. I didn't work my heart out and give my guts out to see that happen. No time for merely being armchair politicians. It's a time for heroes. Obama is doing his part. How about we get up off our duffs and do ours. He can't do it alone. We have to stay awake and create the pressure that will make it happen.
See Dawn Teo's Profile
I think the point of what OFA is doing is completely missed here. OFA is on the ground in many states and getting ready to roll out on the rest of the 50 states. They are at various stages -- from the Listening Tours (the first stage), to the organizing stage (setting up volunteer networks starting with hardcore volunteers), to mobilizing their networks. Most states are in the listening tour stage. A few are on the organizing stage, and even fewer are in the mobilization stage. But they are all working toward the same hands-on, ground-based operations. What you are seeing in those emails is a way for the organization to keep in touch with supporters who have yet to be activated. It is an easy way to keep them connected and interested.
I agree.
It's never too much for an organization to send e-mails out that keep its supporters "connected and interested". And I believe OFA is doing an exceptional job in this respect.
Speak for yourself.
I voted for him, reluctantly, knowing that he was a Centrist, and that a Centrist is not what America needs.
I even sent him money--after he won the nomination.
But it left a bitter taste in my mouth at the time.
I've never felt "connected and interested." I knew I was going to be sold out, and now I'm being sold out.
I knew what was going to happen under Bush, too. I'm not dumb.
Just what exactly is the point of OFA?
What exactly is it supposed to accomplish?
Evidently it's not going to be used to fight the cartels and plutocracy in America.
I don't see Obama using OFA to support Bernie Sanders' bill to cap credit card interest rates.
I don't see him using it to support single payer health care.
Yet both of these policies are supported by a majority of Americans.
Apparently the purpose of OFA is just to get Obama reelected, so that he can continue to enable conservative (i.e. "centrist," i.e., plutocratic) Democrats to obstruct real change in Congress.
I don't want "Obama for America." I want single-payer health care for America. I want capped credit card rates. I want the EFCA. I want a lot of other things that American workers want and need and aren't going to get, even if Obama gets two terms, if he keeps up his supposedly "pragmatic" but actually philosophically centrist lack of leadership
Very true, no one is going to get off their butt to fight for lowest common denomiator vague policy. If Obama wants to get people involved push for what he promised.
You can only sell out your activist base once. Disappointing that he is planning to do it so quickly
This is what I was talking about Ari Melber. Whether my post ever makes it through or not. This.
Were you covering a result? Or planting a conclusion?
You're a good writer. Try to remember that.
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