Archive for November, 2009:
Attend an OFA National Training Event
From Nicole Derse, the OFA National Training Director:
Cheap AccutaneI wanted to invite you to a special OFA National Training we're holding for some of our top volunteers in early December.
The training is a great chance to learn how to make the biggest impact in your community, ask questions, and learn specific skills such as how to talk with your neighbors about health reform and use OFA's technology to organize most effectively.
RSVP now to reserve your spot in an OFA National Training event near you:During the election last year, we learned that when we build a dedicated community of volunteer leaders, we can bring about powerful change.
This training is part of building our momentum on the ground -- strengthening our community in every part of the country by bringing volunteers together, learning and sharing best practices, and refining our plan to move forward with our vision for the future.
I hope you can make it,
Nicole
Nicole Derse
National Training Director
Organizing for America
Morning News
From Politico:
A new analysis by a leading MIT economist provides new ammunition for Democrats as the Senate begins formally debating the historic health-reform bill being pushed by President Barack Obama.
The report concludes that under the Senate’s health-reform bill, Americans buying individual coverage will pay less than they do for today's typical individual market coverage, and would be protected from high out-of-pocket costs…
The “microsimulation” analysis is by Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Treasury Department official under President Bill Clinton. Gruber used data from the Congressional Budget Office.
Gruber concludes that people purchasing individual insurance would save an annual $200 (singles) to $500 (families) in 2009 dollars. And people with low incomes would receive premium tax credits that would reduce the price that they pay for health insurance by as much as $2,500 to $7,500…
From the New York Times:
President Obama plans to lay out a time Buy cheap Accutane Online frame for winding down the American involvement in the war in Afghanistan when he announces his decision this week to send more forces, senior administration officials said Sunday.
Although the speech was still in draft form, the officials said the president wanted to use the address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Tuesday night not only to announce the immediate order to deploy roughly 30,000 more troops, but also to convey how he intends to turn the fight over to the Kabul government.
“It’s accurate to say that he will be more explicit about both goals and time frame than has been the case before and than has been part of the public discussion,” said a senior official, who requested anonymity to discuss the speech before it is delivered. “He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down…”
From Bloomberg:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid begins this week pushing for Democratic unity on health-care legislation, which may mean catering to the whims of 60 lawmakers who know that each of their votes is essential…
Without any support from Republicans, Reid has to keep his entire caucus in line on issues big and small on a 2,074-page bill that contains the biggest changes to U.S. health care in more than four decades and is President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority…
Both the House and Senate bills would require that Americans get health insurance or pay a penalty, offering subsidies to help lower-income people and setting up online exchanges for comparison shopping. The bills would also require insurers to accept new customers, regardless of preexisting conditions, and encourage greater use of preventive care…
From the Pine Bluff Commercial:
Twin sisters Glinda Courtney Foots and Linda Courtney Weathers have put their writing and singing skills to work to encourage change. They’ve created and recorded a song entitled “Health Care Reform.”
“It sheds light on the urgency for health care insurance for all Americans,” Weathers said, adding that it pleads to lawmakers to pass legislation immediately. “This song is dedicated to the late Ted Kennedy.”
Foots and Weathers hope their song has had a positive impact on the issue of health care reform.
“We wanted to put a positive spin on the cause of health care reform,” Foots said. “We want the American people to realize the importance of it….”
Weathers was asked by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, to share her husband’s story with Congressman Glen Nye (D-Va). The organization was delivering 3,000 health care declarations to support the president’s reform efforts. Weathers visited the congressman’s office along with several other supporters of health care reform and shared copies of the song she and her sister had written.
Foots and Weathers co-wrote and recorded the song a month after Thomas Weathers left the hospital.
“It’s our way of getting a message out through song,” Foots said. “We want the message to be loud and clear…"
Video: President Obama Pardons White House Turkey
In case you missed it, here's the full video of President Obama granting theCheap Cialis > traditional Thanksgiving pardon to the Official White House Turkey, in a ceremony that took place Wednesday:
Weekly Address: President Obama Delivers Thanksgiving Greeting
Given the holiday, the White House released the President's Weekly Address early this week, and President Obama took the opportunity to call to our attention the men and women in uniform who are away from home, sacrificing time with family to protect our safety and freedom. He also talks about the progress of health care reform, the Recovery Act, and job creation, as we work to ensure that next Thanksgiving will Provigil online No prescription be a brighter day:
Thanksgiving Message from the President
Earlier this afternoon, President Obama sent supporters a special Thanksgiving message of thanks and gratitude:
Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.
American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.
Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.
So tomorrow, I'll be giving thanks for my family -- for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.
But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.
The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. Provigil pharmacy The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.
We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.
So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.
It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.
In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.
You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished -- and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.
So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.
With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,
President Barack Obama
President Obama to Attend Copenhagen Climate Talks
The White House announced today that President Obama will travel to Copenhagen on Dec. 9 to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in order to work with the international community to drive progress toward a comprehensive and operational Copenhagen accord. The White House also announced that President Obama is prepared to put on the table a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.
The Washington Post reported that the announcement provides "new momentum" for the talks, saying:
Obama's decision to attend -- and commit to an emission reduction target -- prompted an outpouring of support from the environmental community and its Democratic allies ...
Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is working to fashion a bipartisan compromise climate bill along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), said the administration's decision to put specific climate goals on the table at the United Nations-sponsored talks amounts to "a global game changer with big reverberations here at home."
"The Obama administration is now undeniably mustering bonafide leadership on climate change, not merely departing from Bush administration intransigence and ideology," Kerry said. "By announcing a provisional target, contingent on the support of Congress, the president has defined a path to an international agreement that challenges the developed and developing nations of the to fulfill their obligations.
Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said it marked the first time Obama has "signaled that he's ready to roll up his sleeves to make a climate change deal happen."
Underscoring President Obama’s commitment to American leadership on clean energy and combating climate change, the White House also announced today that a host of Cabinet secretaries and other top officials from across the Administration will travel to Copenhagen for the conference. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson are all scheduled to attend, along with Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, and Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner.
Order Generic Accutane Online without Prescription >Read the full White House press release...
Morning News
From the Washington Post:
…The toasts Buy Cialis were gracious, of course, but also took note of history and the changing nature of an increasingly interconnected world.
"To the future that beckons all of us. Let us answer its call. And let our two great nations realize all the triumphs and achievements that await us," Obama said.
And Singh reciprocated: "Mr. President, your journey to the White House has captured the imagination of millions and millions of people in India. You are an inspiration to all those who cherish the values of democracy, diversity and equal opportunity."
The menu was supervised by guest chef Marcus Samuelsson of New York's Aquavit, which specializes in Swiss cuisine, one of the few facts related to the evening that doesn't seem to symbolize anything. Samuelsson worked with the White House kitchen staff to create predominantly vegetarian dishes, out of respect for Singh, who does not eat meat…
Also on the bill, jazz vocalist and Chicagoan Kurt Elling and another Chicago native, Jennifer Hudson…
Obama told the assembled crowd that he had chosen India for his first state dinner to reflect "the high esteem in which I and the American people hold your wise leadership. It reflects the abiding bonds of respect and friendship between our people, including our friends in the Indian American community who join us here today," the president said. "But above all, your visit, at this pivotal moment in history, speaks to the opportunity before us -- to build the relationship between our nations, born in the last century, into one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century."Then Singh spoke briefly, noting that "India and America are separated by distance, but bound together by the values of democracy, pluralism, rule of law and respect for fundamental human freedoms. Over the years, we have built upon these values and created a partnership that is based upon both principle and pragmatism."
"I've come today to build upon these successes and to strengthen our multifaceted relationship," Singh said…
From the New York Times:
Some of the debtors sitting forlornly in this city’s old stone bankruptcy court have lost a job or gotten divorced. Others have been summoned to face their creditors because they spent mindlessly beyond their means. But all too often these days, they are there merely because they, or their children, got sick.
Wes and Katie Covington, from Smyrna, Tenn., were already in debt from a round of fertility treatments when complications with her pregnancy and surgery on his knee left them with unmanageable bills. For Christine L. Phillips of Nashville, it was a $10,000 trip to the emergency room after a car wreck, on the heels of costly operations to remove a cyst and repair a damaged nerve.
Jodie and Charlie Mullins of Dickson, Tenn., were making ends meet on his patrolman’s salary until she developed debilitating back pain that required spinal surgery and forced her to quit nursing school. As with many medical bankruptcies, they had health insurance but their policy had a $3,000 deductible and, to their surprise, covered only 80 percent of their costs…
President Obama, in addressing a joint session of Congress in September, called on lawmakers to protect those “who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.” He added: “These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans.”
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, made a similar case on Saturday in a floor speech calling for passage of a measure to open debate on his chamber’s health care bill.
The legislation moving through Congress would attack the problem in numerous ways…
From the Wall Street Journal:
The Obama administration's push to solve the nation's energy problems, a massive federal program that rivals the Manhattan Project, is spurring a once-in-a-generation shift in U.S. science.
The government's multibillion-dollar push into energy research is reinvigorating 17 giant U.S.-funded research facilities, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory here to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. After many years of flat budgets, these labs are ramping up to develop new electricity sources, trying to build more-efficient cars and addressing climate change…
The Office of Science estimates its bigger budget allowed it to create nearly 1,400 research jobs at the 10 labs it oversees in the fiscal year ending in September, up 11% from the previous year's staffing levels. It estimates it created another 1,400 science jobs at universities. In addition, it says, funds from the Obama administration's stimulus package created hundreds more government lab jobs. As a result, the balance of U.S. science is shading a few degrees -- away from the pure research typically practiced at universities, and toward applied science.
These efforts mark a third wave of spending at national labs such as Oak Ridge, a vast complex of woods and research facilities not far from Knoxville, Tenn. Oak Ridge was one of three labs set up to help build the atomic bomb during World War II. It boomed again during America's energy-independence push in the 1970s...
From Insurance News Net:
Women in business in some ways are harder hit than their male counterparts by the nation's broken health care system, paying more for their own health insurance coverage as they struggle to compete in a tough business climate.
For social worker Melinda Merrill-Maguire, it has meant continuing to work full time for a local social services agency and only part time in the private practice she owns with her domestic partner, Charissa. Her full-time job provides the couple and their 3-year-old son with affordable, comprehensive health care benefits - a necessity that would have been out of reach if they had to purchase coverage on their own.
Those valuable "golden handcuffs" keep her tied to her agency job, she said Friday, and limit her ability to develop her own business. Buying a family insurance policy comparable to the coverage she has now would cost more than $2,000 a month, she said.
Merrill-Maguire was one of a handful of area businesswomen attending a small gathering Friday in support of contentious national health care reform legislation pending in Congress. The event was sponsored by Organizing for America Maine, an offshoot of the Democratic National Committee, and Change That Works, an advocacy group affiliated with the Service Employees International Union.
Shelby Wright of Organizing for America Maine said at the meeting that women at age 25 pay about 45 percent more for comprehensive health coverage than their male counterparts. By age 40, the difference is higher, almost 50 percent, she said, so the decision to purchase health care coverage is even more difficult for women than it is for men…
Morning News
From the Washington Post:
…The toasts were gracious, of course, but also took note of history and the changing nature of an increasingly interconnected world.
"To the future that beckons all of us. Let us answer its call. And let our two great nations realize all the triumphs and achievements that await us," Obama said.
And Singh reciprocated: "Mr. President, your journey to the White House has captured the imagination of millions and millions of people in India. You are an inspiration to all those who cherish the values of democracy, diversity and equal opportunity."
The menu was supervised by guest chef Marcus Samuelsson of New York's Aquavit, which specializes in Swiss cuisine, one of the few facts related to the evening that doesn't seem to symbolize anything. Samuelsson worked with the White House kitchen staff to create predominantly vegetarian dishes, out of respect for Singh, who does not eat meat…
Also on the bill, jazz vocalist and Chicagoan Kurt Elling and another Chicago native, Jennifer Hudson…
Obama told the assembled crowd that he had chosen India for his first state dinner to reflect "the high esteem in which I and the American people hold your wise leadership. It reflects the abiding bonds of respect and friendship between our people, including our friends in the Indian American community who join us here today," the president said. "But above all, your visit, at this pivotal moment in history, speaks to the opportunity before us -- to build the relationship between our nations, born in the last century, into one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century."Then Singh spoke briefly, noting that "India and America are separated by distance, but bound together by the values of democracy, pluralism, rule of law and respect for fundamental human freedoms. Over the years, we have built upon these values and created a partnership that is based upon both principle and pragmatism."
"I've come today to build upon these successes and to strengthen our multifaceted relationship," Singh said…
From the New York Times:
Some of the debtors sitting forlornly in this city’s old stone bankruptcy court have lost a job or gotten divorced. Others have been summoned to face their creditors because they spent mindlessly beyond their means. But all too often these days, they are there merely because they, or their children, got sick.
Wes and Katie Covington, from Smyrna, Tenn., were already in debt from a round of fertility treatments when complications with her pregnancy and surgery on his knee left them with unmanageable bills. For Christine L. Phillips of Order Generic Cialis Online without Prescription Nashville, it was a $10,000 trip to the emergency room after a car wreck, on the heels of costly operations to remove a cyst and repair a damaged nerve.
Jodie and Charlie Mullins of Dickson, Tenn., were making ends meet on his patrolman’s salary until she developed debilitating back pain that required spinal surgery and forced her to quit nursing school. As with many medical bankruptcies, they had health insurance but their policy had a $3,000 deductible and, to their surprise, covered only 80 percent of their costs…
President Obama, in addressing a joint session of Congress in September, called on lawmakers to protect those “who live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy.” He added: “These are not primarily people on welfare. These are middle-class Americans.”
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, made a similar case on Saturday in a floor speech calling for passage of a measure to open debate on his chamber’s health care bill.
The legislation moving through Congress would attack the problem in numerous ways…
From the Wall Street Journal:
The Obama administration's push to solve the nation's energy problems, a massive federal program that rivals the Manhattan Project, is spurring a once-in-a-generation shift in U.S. science.
The government's multibillion-dollar push into energy research is reinvigorating 17 giant U.S.-funded research facilities, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory here to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. After many years of flat budgets, these labs are ramping up to develop new electricity sources, trying to build more-efficient cars and addressing climate change…
The Office of Science estimates its bigger budget allowed it to create nearly 1,400 research jobs at the 10 labs it oversees in the fiscal year ending in September, up 11% from the previous year's staffing levels. It estimates it created another 1,400 science jobs at universities. In addition, it says, funds from the Obama administration's stimulus package created hundreds more government lab jobs. As a result, the balance of U.S. science is shading a few degrees -- away from the pure research typically practiced at universities, and toward applied science.
These efforts mark a third wave of spending at national labs such as Oak Ridge, a vast complex of woods and research facilities not far from Knoxville, Tenn. Oak Ridge was one of three labs set up to help build the atomic bomb during World War II. It boomed again during America's energy-independence push in the 1970s...
From Insurance News Net:
Women in business in some ways are harder hit than their male counterparts by the nation's broken health care system, paying more for their own health insurance coverage as they struggle to compete in a tough business climate.
For social worker Melinda Merrill-Maguire, it has meant continuing to work full time for a local social services agency and only part time in the private practice she owns with her domestic partner, Charissa. Her full-time job provides the couple and their 3-year-old son with affordable, comprehensive health care benefits - a necessity that would have been out of reach if they had to purchase coverage on their own.
Those valuable "golden handcuffs" keep her tied to her agency job, she said Friday, and limit her ability to develop her own business. Buying a family insurance policy comparable to the coverage she has now would cost more than $2,000 a month, she said.
Merrill-Maguire was one of a handful of area businesswomen attending a small gathering Friday in support of contentious national health care reform legislation pending in Congress. The event was sponsored by Organizing for America Maine, an offshoot of the Democratic National Committee, and Change That Works, an advocacy group affiliated with the Service Employees International Union.
Shelby Wright of Organizing for America Maine said at the meeting that women at age 25 pay about 45 percent more for comprehensive health coverage than their male counterparts. By age 40, the difference is higher, almost 50 percent, she said, so the decision to purchase health care coverage is even more difficult for women than it is for men…
“A Milestone in the Health Care Journey”
Last weekend, Ron Brownstein – a reporter for The Atlantic – wrote that the Senate’s health insurance reform legislation marks a “milestone in the health care journey.”
Brownstein spoke to several leading economists, including MIT health care economist Jonathan Gruber, who agreed that the Senate’s legislation is a major step toward ending the unsustainable growth of costs in our health care system.
Gruber, a self-proclaimed “skeptic on this stuff,” said: “Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill.” Len Nichols of the non-partisan New America Foundation and Mark McClellan, the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush, were also positive in their analysis of the bill.
Brownstein digs deep into Majority Leader Reid’s efforts to blend the Senate Finance Committee’s bill with the HELP Committee’s legislation and “bend the curve” by “shifting the medical payment system away from today's fee-for-service model toward an approach that more closely links compensation for providers to results for patients.” The piece also highlights how Reid incorporated four measures identified in a letter from 20 leading economists to President Obama, that are essential to fiscally responsible health insurance reform.
We excerpted the article in the Morning News clips on Monday, but here’s a highlight in case you missed it. It’s worth the read: Buy Accutane
When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won't succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.
"I'm sort of a known skeptic on this stuff," Gruber told me. "My summary is it's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing…"The attempt in all these ideas to nudge the medical system away from fee-for-service medicine toward an approach that ties compensation more closely to results captures how much the health care debate has shifted toward cost-control. So far, the rise in health care spending has proven almost invulnerable to every previous attempt to tame it, like the managed care revolution in the 1990s. Even if Obama signs into law a final bill embodying all these reform proposals, many skeptics wonder if they can bend, much less break, the seemingly inexorable increase in health care spending. Reischauer understands that skepticism, but isn't able to entirely suppress a kernel of optimism that this latest reform agenda may prove more effective than its predecessors. "One never knows whether we're turning the corner or if this is just playing the same old game for another inning," he says. "But I sense there's something different out there. I think the medical profession and its leaders have read the handwriting on the wall and are trying to evolve." If so, the ideas the Senate will begin voting on tonight could mark a milestone in that journey.