Maggie Abbot Fowler

Now or Never for Health Care Reform?

Membership in the Gettysburg DFA Health Care Task Force has grown to include more than forty people. We have conducted about a dozen showings of the Frontline documentary Sick Around the World in homes and church groups so far this summer, and in recent weeks task force members have shared their concerns about health care reform in meetings with Senator Arlen Specter, Congressman Todd Platts, and prospective senatorial candidate Joe Sestak.

Our task force will be meeting again soon (during the last week of August, date TBA).  Upcoming projects and initiatives include:

·       Lobbying visits with Platts, Specter, and Casey during the August recess (contact: Elaine Jones)

·       Support for the Dennis Kucinich Amendments to current House Health Care Reform bill

·       Our ongoing Sick around the World house party campaign

·       Letters to the editor on reform

·       Participation in a July 30 single payer rally in D.C. (contact: Lou and Pat Hammann)

·       Community presentation by Dr. Dwight Michael to local Chamber of Commerce members

·       Hosting of a delegation of Oregon doctors committed to single payer (sometime in the fall)

·       Eisenhower Institute programming on Health Care reform (contact: Lou Hammann)

·       Discussion of Do No Resuscitate, an important resource on reform (contact: Will Lane)

Clearly, there is much to be done over the next 4-6 weeks as Congress staggers toward a vote on Reform.  But it’s also just as clear that our work will continue after September as we mobilize to support Single Payer at the state level and use what we have learned from Sick around the World, Do Not Resuscitate and other sources to evaluate the success or failure of health care legislation at the federal level. For more information, or to receive updates from the Health Care Task Force, please contact me at wlane@gettysburg.edu.

Will Lane

EES Announces 350.org Plans for October 24

DFA’s Environment, Energy, and Sustainability Task Force has recently begun to network with other community organizations to build support for local participation a worldwide demonstration of concern about climate change in October.  Here is an excerpt from their letter soliciting support:

The Gettysburg Area DFA Task Force on Energy, Environment, and Sustainability is excited to announce that they are beginning to organize an event for the International Day of Climate Action on October 24th, 2009.  The event is part of a global movement called 350.org, a massive campaign to raise awareness about climate change and influence our world leaders to take bold action and draft a progressive new global treaty on climate policy this December in Copenhagen.  Please visit www.350.org for more information about this incredible campaign.

Since climate change is something that effects us all, we would like to encourage the participation of as many people as possible.  By reaching out to many different organizations, churches, and schools throughout Adams County, we hope to build momentum and bring as many different people as possible together to take a stand on climate change.

There are countless ways to participate and endless opportunities to get involved in this campaign between now and October 24th.   First and foremost, we would like to establish community partners and liaisons with whom we can communicate with as we move forward with our planning and organizing.  If you are interested or know someone else who may be, please let us know as soon as possible.  Secondly, we would like to ask that you begin to brainstorm ideas for ways you or your group can participate; whether it is by planting trees, volunteering for clean-up projects, creating artwork, educating others, or sharing your time or talents with us on October 24th.  Among other things, we are planning a march through the center of town and a public rally with music and speakers.  We are still in the early stages of planning however, so any ideas or contacts that you can bring to the table would be much appreciated.

For more information on this effort, contact Peter Boving at boving@juno.com.

Kucinich Amendments Enable Health Care Reform

This was posted recently to Lou Hammann from the Alliance for Democracy:

With your support, your phone calls, your emails, we won a major legislative victory today for a state single payer health care optionin the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes. [ed. note: Platts voted for this, Sestak against.]

The amendment propels the growing single payer health care movement at the state level. There are at least ten states that have active single payer efforts in their legislatures. They are California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. The amendment mandates a single payer state will receive the right to waive the application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government health care.

Under the Kucinich Amendment a state's application for a waiver from ERISA is granted automatically if the state has signed into law a single payer plan. With the amendment, for the first time, the state single payer health care option is shielded from an ERISA-based legal attack. Now that the underlying bill has been passed, as amended, by the full committee, we must make sure that Congress knows that we want the provision kept in the bill at final passage!

The state single payer option was one of five major amendments which I obtained support to get included in HR3200. One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary andalternative medicine, (integrative medicine). Another amendment drives down the cost of prescription drugs by ending pharmaceutical industry's sharp practices manipulating physician-prescribing habits.An amendment stops the insurance industry from increasing premiums at the time when people are not permitted to change health plans; and finally an amendment imposing a requirement on insurance companies that they disclose the cost of advertising, marketing and executive compensation expenses (which generally divert money from patient care).

Please make sure you post this message on your social networking site, ask all your friends to get involved and encourage everyone you know to sign up at www.Kucinich.us so we can build full momentum behind this movement for real health care. Let's do this!

A Letter from the Chair

A big thank you to all of you who have sent well wishes to Bill as he recovers from open heart surgery.  He is doing very well, and credits his family and friends with helping him to feel upbeat and confident as he bounces back to his usual healthy, active self.

Another big thank you for your support while I took a huge step back from my leadership role with DFA to be with Bill these past few weeks.  Some of you knew him before 1995 and were as shocked as I was that being a jock doesn’t prevent coronary artery disease.  Fortunately, by-pass surgery—bad as it is-- can prevent a heart attack. Since this is Bill’s second such experience we are well aware that major surgery takes over your life and only time can heal.  We are deeply grateful that we have health insurance, unlike so many Americans today. 

I am delighted to report that DFA is alive and thriving.  All you have to do is check out our new recreation of our website www.GettysburgAreaDFA.org to see what’s happening.  Once again DFA has chosen Gettysburg to be the location to send Jim Dean and their national training staff for two days of intensive training on September 25 & 26.  We’ll get expert advice on how to run a campaign, raise funds, use the media, build a network, and myriad other skills.   See above article by Maggie to sign up.  A similar training got us rolling in 2005, and I, for one, am ready to do it all over again because I know I still have a lot to learn.

It’s clear that those of us who have worked hard for “CHANGE” know that the job is not done.  And we are not going to stop doing our part to transform our country, whatever it takes.

Check out our new website often at www.GettysburgAreaDFA.org and get involved!

Elaine Jones, Chair
Gettysburg Area DFA

Would You Like to Help with this Newsletter?

To make this newsletter (and our website) everything they could be, we need your help!  We need your ideas and suggestions, your writing, and your help with the production and mailing of a printed version several times each year.  To get involved, contact newsletter editors Will Lane (wlane@gettysburg.edu) or Wendy Mizenko (wmizenko@ltsg.edu).

We look forward to hearing from you!

Wendy and Will