Tired Of Feeling Helpless About Health Reform?

I've outlined ways below in what you can do to change that feeling of helplessness as you watch the mark-up process with the health care reform legislation once it's been introduced in the House of Representatives. We can have a huge effect on the health care reform legislation in Congress and in the White House simply by changing our feeling of helplessness by making positive change happen.

Here's how you can make this positive change happen with health care reform. First, start by becoming familiar with the committee mark-up process, which is what happens after a bill is introduced in Congress. There will be a fast timetable especially with the health care reform legislation, which means we get a very small window of time to make positive change happen.

The health care reform legislation will be introduced on July 14th, and it will likely be posted by one of the three House Committees in charge of the health care reform legislation -- Education and Labor Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee. The bill itself will undergo three different mark-ups by each of these three Committees, which means it'll be an incredibly messy process in which good amendments and bad amendments will be offered to either strengthen or weaken the bill.

Basically, here's what you can do once the bill is introduced and before the mark-up process begins the next day -- call each of these three committees, and ask for the amendments to be posted to the committee website so everyone has a chance to review them in full before knowing which amendments to support and which ones not to support.

This allows us the opportunity to be able to lobby our Members of Congress who are on these committees to support or to vote against a specific amendment. This is what making positive change happen is all about, and we don't have to feel helpless about the process with the health care reform legislation in congress.

Follow Noelle Cigarroa Perese on Twitter: www.twitter.com/slinkerwink

Comments

[DestinationsUnknown]

they are already having mark ups

the senate has had about 15 already

Todd's HELP comm

[marimba]

Great article as usual, Noelle/sli­nkerwink!!­!

[from puffmeister at kos]

[theone718]

Keep up the good fight. There is still a ways to go but we are winning this fight so let's get a KO victory for America.

[Billl]

Current reform proposals that will force individuals and businesses to pay into expensive services are worse than no reforms at all.

Health care reform needs to serve people and businesses and not make them indentured servants toiling to expand the profits of the insurance and health care industries.

Removing businesses requirements for being financially or otherwise involved in any way with health care, and using government’s advantages for lowering costs, is the way to bring rapid “game changing” innovations and reforms to a new public/private system for serving individuals and businesses and saving taxpayers billions.

Nobody can collect the money to pay for health care as cheaply as the government can through a national sales tax, and nobody can deliver high quality care and medications, free to everyone who asks for them, without requiring insurance, or co pays as cost effectively as the government can through government owned and operated hospitals, serving as the public portion of a public/private reform system, and that system would save hundreds of billions annually from the current $2.5trillion spent last year.

Private pay private care could be kept by everyone who likes what they have.

Entrepreneurs and businesses could go back to doing what they do best, creating goods, services, jobs, profits, and tax revenues, liberated from health care costs and hassles.

Young, old, rich, poor, and everyone would know that they can receive quality health care free whenever they need it period

[spinns17]

http://www.carlyle.com/Portfolio/Industry/item8228.html

[unbozo]

Thanks Noelle! Let's get this thing done!

[BobLablah]

I feel helpless to stop these idiots from creating another failed government ponzi scheme like medicare.

[thehoopoe]

You'll feel less helpless when you are actually using medicare.

[cybermome1207]

Have you used Medicare??? I hear no complaints from my 2 sisters who are on it..I'm too young to be on it.

What kind of insurance do you have and what do you pay a month?

[BobLablah]

Of course the people using medicare like the cost of the program, that's exactly the point. The benefits provided are unsustainable, hence the term "ponzi scheme", alluding to the fact that current taxpayers are being asked to pay for people already using medicare with no hope of ever getting the same benefits themselves. Jeesh.

[spinns17]

http://www.carlyle.com/Portfolio/Industry/item8228.html