Why Can't We Have Health Benefits as Good as Chuck Grassley?

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley gets a pretty sweet deal as Senator on health care. He pays $356.59 per month, and the most he pays when visiting a doctor or hospital is $300. Compare that to your average Iowan family, who would pay almost $600 a month and be on the hook for $5,000 or more if they went to the hospital.

And who pays for Grassley's benefits? Taxpayers like you and me.

Senator Grassley's health benefits meet his needs and they're affordable. So why can't people like you and me have something just as good?

Grassley was asked this very question by an Iowa voter at a town hall a few weeks ago. Instead of honestly answering the question, Grassley dismissed it, saying first that the citizen should get a job with John Deere (which recently laid off hundreds in Iowa) and then that the citizen should get a job with the federal government - a job like Senator Grassley's - if he wanted health care as good.

Watch:

Outrageous, right? Click here to fight back against Senator Grassley's comment.

An honest answer to the question would have seen Senator Grassley being straightforward about his position on health care. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and the Senator currently leading his party in opposition to health reform, is against just about everything President Obama is for on the subject. He signed a letter against a public health insurance option that would lower costs and make health care available to people like me and you, and he's against asking employers to kick in their fair share towards health reform, another key proposal from President Obama.

Finally, he's the one who's been holding up progress on health reform on the Senate Finance Committee. With the House introducing their bill in their three committees today, and the Senate HELP Committee already marking up a bill, that means the Senate Finance Committee is the only committee yet to unveil a health reform bill, in part because Grassley is holding up a "bipartisan compromise."

But Senator Grassley didn't tell the assembled Iowans that he's obstructing health reform and that he's against giving people coverage as good as he gets - even though a large majority of Iowans support President Obama's health reform proposals. Instead, he snapped back with a snide remark.

So, in response, can you fill out a job application to work in Senator Grassley's office, to get health benefits as good as he gets? Working with our local partners, we'll be delivering the job applications to his offices in Iowa. It'll make for good TV, and it'll help drive home the point about Grassley's obstructionism.

Also, we're advertising this video online as well, using the image you see above, so every Iowan sees Senator Grassley's cavalier response to the health care crisis.

Click here to watch the video and fill out your job application. And forward the page on to friends to help us spread the word.

Senators like Chuck Grassley can't be allowed to get away with obstructing health reform.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

I'm proud to work for Health Care for America Now

Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/j_ro

Comments

[edgoldman1]

Two suggestions:
1. Any member of congress opposed to health care for all citizens should lose his/her government sponsored health care and have to purchase it on the open private insurance market. If the member of congress has a pre-existing health condition, they should suffer the same consequence as you and I.

2. All members of congress should wear a uniform like NASCAR drivers. Each and every company that currently "sponsors" the member of congress would have their corporate logo sewn onto the uniform. That way we would would know at a glance who is buying their position on legislation and their vote.

I'm surprised that when Grassley had his town hall meeting and made his "I got mine, you can go screw yourself" comment about health insurance and that the questioner should get a job that provides insurance like his, he wasn't asked why he voted against the government stimulus bill in February (even though inadequate to deal with current and impending job losses) so more jobs might be available to Americans who want to work and have the security for adequate health care.

[martinspringfield]

"nd he's against asking employers to kick in their fair share towards health reform, another key proposal from President Obama."

First of all, most employers HAVE been paying more than their fair share in our retarded healthcare system for a long time. Why should employers have to provide healthcare coverage? It's a ridiculous burden on them. Not only do employers have to compete with slave labor from China, illegal workers who work for cash and pay no payroll taxes, and government-subsidized competition from India and elsewhere - on top of that you want to make they pay even more, when they've been dealing with double-digit increases every year?

A single-payer national healthcare system like they have in Canada, England, France, Japan, Germany - where is our freedom of choice? Why don't we get this option? Why must we continue to subsidize an insane system? Because subsidize it we do.

Obama's compromises on this issue doom it to failure.

[dayala]

why isn't Obama using this clip in his new Healthcare Ad Campaign.

[clearenergy]

That's easy. We pretty much foot his bill...

[aofh]

Obviously Grassley and cohorts are not concerned with health care or any other issue the public is concerned about. I don't think Republicans have seriously share public concerns since Gingrich marketed his Contract with America in the mid 90s. I'd like to know what really concerns them. If you want to truly engage them, what do you have to talk about?

[newpantaloons]

Cutting taxes, deregulation for Corporations, pay-raises for Congress, tax-exemption for 'churches', teaching 'creationism' in public schools, vouchers for private schools, getting rid of Roe v Wade, claiming that 'embryos' are 'people', bombing Iran or any other country Republicans don't like, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc....

[quidam56]

As a former health care giver, I am shocked and saddened to see what has become of health care in America. $ 1. 4 million is being spent per day in DC by the health care lobbyists so your elected representative is getting taken care of and has quality health care we pay for and can't afford ourselves for our families, I know what is deemed, defended and supported in Tennessee and Virginia as quality health care and clearly profit care comes ahead of patient care. http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62 MRSA ( methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureas ) is infesting our communities because filthy, uncaring hospitals and emergency rooms are breeding them and spreading them into our schools, homes, restaurants. How many more Americans' will be diseased or die while 74 % of Americans' are begging for health care reform ? More people died in America last year from MRSA complications than AIDS. When MRSA and a flu bug start mixing, it won't be pretty and we are being infected by the very health care system we depend on and trust to keep us safe and healthy.

[window-washer]

I keep hearing how much the "new" health plan will cost over a 10 year period. What I would like to know...If we do nothing, how much will our present "health plan" cost over the next 10 year span?

[antmousie]

Much more, I'm sure, but who wants to talk about that.

[Jason Rosenbaum - Huffpost Blogger]

According to wiki, by 2016 we'll spend one in ever five dollars on health care if we don't do anything. We already spend one in seven now.

[Shammie2000]

Notice that crowd old, mostly white males, and they keep sending these ReThug's back to office
to destroy their lives, Dam, but we gotta get rid of them illegal's.

[ReesieKitty]

Wow- if I was at that meeting and he had said that to me, I'd be pissed. Maybe we ought to look at this another way. Maybe we ought to have all the senators spend a year with the lowest possible level of health coverage in the country for them and their families. Then see what they have to say.

[elbzee]

WOW indeed! I've known & worked with many Iowians. They're good, solid, honest people. I cannot believe he would be so arrogant as to treat his constituants like this. But, I have to give him kudos. Here's an elected representative honestly sneering down his nose at the people. So, I guess the honesty is refreshing as it is infuriating!

[csavage]

John Deere makes farm equipment.
All spellchecks aside, we cannot let the GOP and their enablers, the MSM, continue to link the concepts of employment=health insurance=not a bum. There are plenty of hard working people who have no coverage for healthcare. They are not bums. They are part-time teachers, contract laborers, healthcare workers, farmers. Outraged Iowans should flood his office with employment applications

[apingebrig]

It's John Deere, not "John Deer."

[booktone]

Good lord, Grassley is so locked in to his talking points and his Beltway mindset that he doesn't even realize how snide his comments are. He, like most of Congress, has no conception of what life is like outside of Washington.
He truly believes his elected office is his birthright.....Iowa, come next Election Day, can you help us out and help him get a new job in the private sector?

[Ozarks]

Well, he has been an elected since 1980. He probably, living at C Street with that Coven of white guys who think they can do no wrong, thinks he is one of the chosen ones.

[aofh]

Wasn't he just re-elected?

[JesustheLiberal]

WOW...and yet I am sure there will be no outcry from the gop masses who go pay alot for it or even go without insurance.

As long as he remains anti abortion and pro school prayer he is solid with Iowegians!