Please forward widely ...

Urgently needed TODAY: Calls to our reps in the US House to reinstate the Kucinich amendment to the health care bill, and to insist on a floor vote on the Weiner bill.

To act in coordination and solidarity with Olympia Single Payer Action, when you call Brian Baird's office, why not SAY that you are acting in concert with the newly-formed single payer advocacy group in Olympia called Olympia Single Payer Action, visiting his Olympia office today.

The toll-free number for the Congressional Switchboard is 866-338-1015.

It might be helpful to refer to the two "expectations" cited in the letter we will deliver today -- numbered "1)" and "2)."

Here's the current draft of that letter:

Monday, November 2, 2009

Dear Representative Baird,

At a recent town hall meeting in Olympia you told roughly 1000 of your constituents that you did not believe it was politically feasible for the United States to achieve a single payer health care system. Yet the U.S. is alone among all other industrialized countries in allowing private insurance corporations to profit from its health care system. People the world over marvel at the degree to which the U.S. allows its health care dollars to be siphoned off by an industry which adds absolutely nothing to the provision of care, while millions of people lack access to health care at all.

We are a citizen community called Olympia Single Payer Action; we held our first meeting the day after the town hall forum in which you said that single payer was not politically feasible. We believe that people in the U.S. are coming to realize that the only way to get the most health care for the dollars spent is to remove insurance industry profiteering from the system altogether. Our goal is to energize the grassroots in order to make single payer not only politically feasible, but politically imperative.

Toward that end, we have thus far spent two days at the Olympia Farmers Market asking community members to write messages of support for single payer onto postcards which we are delivering to you today. The messages from those who signed the cards urge you to do two things:

1) Insist that Speaker Pelosi follow through on her promise to Rep. Weiner that there will be a full floor vote on his single payer amendment, which substitutes the text of the current bill, HR 3962, with the provisions of HR 676, the single-payer bill sponsored by Rep. Conyers – and then vote Yes when the vote occurs.

2) Support and take action to reinstate the amendment from Rep. Kucinich which frees individual states to pursue single payer plans. As you know, in Canada, a single payer system was adopted one province at a time, beginning with Saskatchewan. Individual states in this country should have the same prerogative.

As currently written, HR 3962 falls far short of the Democratic Party’s stated goal of providing affordable access to quality health care for all Americans. Thus we urge you to sign on to the letter from House members asking the leadership to restore the Kucinich amendment – an essential remedy to the bill’s shortcomings and, as the letter states, a compromise which “allows the country to move incrementally in the direction that is needed.” Additionally, we strongly urge you to vote No on any bill which does not contain the Kucinich amendment.

We see the struggle for a single payer health care system in the U.S. as a long-term project – lifelong if necessary. So you can expect to hear from us on a regular basis.

We will continue to meet and talk with people in our community about meaningful health care reform. In the interim, on behalf of those whose messages we have delivered today, we would like to hear from you, specifically regarding the Weiner and Kucinich amendments, by this coming Monday, Nov 9.

You can reach us by email at olysinglepayer@gmail.com .  You can reach us by phone ...

Sincerely,

The membership of Olympia Single Payer Action