No Support For Pres. Obama From Either Texas' Republican Senators

Both of Texas' conservative Republican U.S. Senators, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, will oppose President Obama's Health Care Reform and Public Option Health Care legislation. (However, they will likely support the "individual mandate health care" program, for which, the health insurance industry is lobbying.)

The four conservative Republicans now running to fill Kay Bailey Hutchison's U.S. Senate seat - when, and if, she ever decides to resign to run for governor - would also, most likely, oppose Pres. Obama's Health Care Reform and Public Option Health Care.

Candidates now in the starting gate pictured below: (Left to right) Houston Mayor Bill White (D), former State Comptroller John Sharp (D), Railroad Commission Chairman Michael Williams (R), State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R), former Secretary of State Roger Williams (R) and Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones (R)

Pictures from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

AARP Urges Burgess To Act On Health Care

WhosPlayin.com Blog
By Kathy Aljoe, Lewisville resident and AARP volunteer

As the national conversation on health care reform reaches a tipping point, AARP volunteers in Lewisville are asking to have a conversation with Congressman Michael Burgess (R- 26th District of Texas) and his staff about the need for Congress to pass legislation to reform our health care system this year.

The national debate on health care reform has reached the moment of truth. Unemployment continues to rise, and skyrocketing medical costs are squeezing individuals, families, businesses, government and the nation as a whole. The nation’s broken health care system has finally reached the top of the nation’s agenda, and it’s time to tackle the problem.

In a recent TeleTown-hall meeting, Representative Burgess said that he prefers a consumer directed health plan, where employees contribute a small amount from each paycheck to be used when medical expenses arise. Consumers currently have this option; it’s called a medical savings account. The real problem is that many Americans can’t afford to set aside additional money for health care when they are already grappling with sky high premiums and deductibles.


What the TeleTown-hall failed to address is the needs of the more than 7 million Americans ages 50 to 64 who are uninsured today. Twenty percent of Texans ages 50 to 64 lack health insurance, some of whom work for employers that don’t offer insurance, others lost coverage when they lost their jobs, still others can’t afford the high premiums based on their age and medical history.

Drug costs are soaring, and 28 percent of Texans enrolled in the Part D drug benefit find themselves in the now infamous “doughnut hole,” potentially facing thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.

Statistics alone fail to adequately capture the human toll suffered by those who can’t afford health care. At AARP, we hear their stories all the time: Cancer patients who cannot afford health insurance; people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and heart disease who cannot fill their costly prescriptions; workers who quit their jobs to care for ailing spouses because they cannot afford to pay for in-home care; people who burn through their life savings, lose their homes and end up in bankruptcy because someone got sick.

The mounting problems in health care breed cynicism, stress and even despair. As a patient who is fast running out of money put it: “So much for the American dream.”

AARP is fighting to make the system work for everyone. We believe that Congress should take the following six steps to guarantee that all Americans have the choice of quality health care plans they can afford:

• Guarantee affordable coverage for Americans ages 50-64;
• Close the Medicare Part D coverage gap or “doughnut hole”;
• Create access to generic versions of costly biologic drugs used to treat cancer and other serious illnesses;
• Prevent costly hospital readmissions by creating a Medicare follow up care benefit to help people transition home after a hospital stay;
• Increase federal funding and eligibility for home and community based services through Medicaid so older Americans can remain in their homes as they age and avoid more costly institutional care; and
• Improve programs that help low income Americans in Medicare afford the health care and prescription drugs they need.

Our health care system costs too much, wastes too much, makes too many mistakes and gives us back too little value for our money. This sad diagnosis is shared by many on both sides of the political aisle.

Yet while members of Congress disagree on details of health reform, the goal of affordable, accessible health care for all commands widespread support. So does the recognition that we all share responsibility to be part of the solution.

With costs rising and coverage shrinking, the need for fair, bipartisan measures to repair the system has never been so urgent. We believe that the costs of doing nothing are simply too high.

We have let our Congressman know that we want him to support these six measures to guarantee affordable, quality health care for all. Congress will be able to vote on health care reform this summer. There is no better time to fix our ailing health care system than now.

(Like Congressman Burgess Collin County's two congressmen, both Republicans,oppose President Obama's push for Health Care Reform and a Public Option Health Care Option. )

Blogging Can Help Candidates Win Elections

South Texas Chisme : Congratulations to Melissa Zamora of Bloggin' All Things Brownsville!

Newcomer Melissa Zamora unseated longtime Brownsville Commissioner Carlos A. Cisneros, capturing the District 3 slot on the City Commission by a strong margin.

As in the May 9 regular city election, Zamora again came in ahead in Saturday's run-off election with 57.67 percent of the vote compared to Cisneros' 42.33 percent.

Public Option "Single-Payer" Health Care

Signup for 'Collin County Health Care Day of Service' - June 27th

Keeping Them Honest
By PAUL KRUGMAN - NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist
June 5, 2009

“I appreciate your efforts, and look forward to working with you so that the Congress can complete health care reform by October.” So declared President Obama in a letter this week to Senators Max Baucus and Edward Kennedy. The big health care push is officially on.

But the devil is in the details. Health reform will fail unless we get serious cost control — and we won’t get that kind of control unless we fundamentally change the way the insurance industry, in particular, behaves. So let me offer Congress two pieces of advice:

1) Don’t trust the insurance industry.
2) Don’t trust the insurance industry.

The Democratic strategy for health reform is based on a political judgment: the belief that the public will be more willing to accept reform, less easily Harry-and-Louised, if those who already have health coverage from private insurers are allowed to keep it.

But how can we have fundamental reform of what Mr. Obama calls a “broken system” if the current players stay in place? --- Click here for REST OF OP-ED COLUMN!... ---

Single-Payer Health Care
By Nicole Gaudiano - Free Press Washington Writer • June 4, 2009
Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) has sponsored the Senate’s only single-payer health-care bill, a plan that would rely on a single source of funding, rather than multiple private insurers, for health care. During a Wednesday news conference, he called it “incomprehensible” that such a proposal isn’t part of the Senate’s discussion on the issue.

Sanders favors a state-administered system funded by the federal government. He said he would continue to seek a hearing in the Senate on the single-payer approach.

Sanders said there’s no question why the current health care system is “so dysfunctional.”

“We have a system dominated by private health insurance companies whose goal is not to provide health care to people,” he said. “In fact, it is to deny health care to people because every dollar they deny ... is a dollar more in profits that they make.”

Sanders arranged a meeting among several single-payer advocates and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a leader on the issue. But the physicians and nurses said they left without assurances that their plan would be considered.

“We will therefore need to continue to press him,” said David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. “It’s what our patients desperately need.”

Himmelstein said the group did secure a promise from Baucus to “use the power of his office” to ensure that charges are dropped against 13 health care providers who were arrested for disrupting Finance Committee hearings last month when they protested the lack of single-payer proponents as witnesses.

“There’s a conspiracy of silence within the Congress in terms of single-payer,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association. “It’s been kept off of the agenda.”

A spokesman for Baucus did not return a call for comment.

President Barack Obama is seeking a Senate vote on health-care reform by August. Proposals are being drafted in the Senate Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pension committees, of which Sanders is a member.

“It’s going to be a grassroots effort,” Sanders said. “When millions and millions of people say every American is entitled to health care as a right, and it must be comprehensive and it must be cost effective ... we’re going to have a single-payer system.”

Signup for 'Collin County Health Care day of Service' - June 27th