Letter I wrote to Olympia Snowe today about health care proposal and reform

I can appreciate what you posted about the fact that you didn't want to support the health reform because the 400+ amendments that were submitted didn't get a chance to be heard. They have to do with issuesas important and meaningful as coverage and preventive care for women, preventive tests etc. We all understand that these are important.

However, I just want to say that as much as every single one of these amendments deserves a chance to be heard, they ultimately are too specific (relatively speaking) compared to the greater issues that the reform is tackling and would resolve if passed.

I am urging all senators to pass this reform now and to find a separate way for the content of these amendments to be considered in a different step so that it doesn't compromise some of the more global aspects we are dealing with. Call them something other then amendments if you have to.

The great issues in the health reform that we should focus on include elimintating the abuse of the private insurances companies, dealing with the fact that the current health system is not financially viable and preventing people from dying. 10s of thousands of americans die each year because they don't have health insurance. We are in the worst social crisis in this country since the 30s. 10s of thousands of americans loose health insurance every day.

They may die if this doesn't pass.

A lot has been compromised to please the republican side already and to take into account budget constraints. The public option was dropped very early on in this debate to disappoint many and the reform went from a version covering 58 million more americans to 31 million. How many more people have to die and how much more has to be compromised in this reform?

How many more people must die?

Reconciliation may be the way for this health reform. Democracy is failing us. Tens of thousands of people are dying every year because they don’t have health insurance and our current system is not viable anymore, it’s costing $8000 per person. We simply need to do something yesterday. The reform as it is proposed today already has an obscene amount of compromises for the republican side already but it's never enough.

They say that the reform in the senate was presented on wednesday for a vote the following saturday when there were months prior to that were the debate was open. Opponents didn't debate cause they were too busy playing the media and deploying strategies to make anything democrat look bad.

For the Republicans and the moderate senators, the reform already went from coverage for an additional 58milion to 31 million and the public option was dropped very early on in the debate. There is nothing socialist about the version of this reform whatsoever. It is just a common sense reform.

There were 400+ additional amendments that didn't get considered for this reform in December 2009. They all deserve to be considered, but they need to be handled separately from the reform itself. Give senators opportunities to submit amendments after the reform passes. Call the amendments something else. Whatever it takes. The big principles of this health reform cannot be compromised because of amendments that relatively speaking are pertaining to details. Anything is 'detail' compared to the fact that tens of million people die each year and that citizens of this country get denied health insurance while the top 5 insurance companies have made a profit of 2.2 billion, which is 56% higher in 2009 then 2008. How much abuse will we allow in this country?

My electronic letter submitted to the White House today

I submitted this today in response to Obama's State of the Union Speech.

"Great speech but I would like to suggest something that you have omitted: outsourcing is the number one problem. It is killing jobs that will never come back.

we need to charge penalties to companies that do. It's the only way. We can't compete with the cheap workforce in India and Asia and even if they double their salaries overseas, they will still stay way more competitive. On a given market, if one company outsources to cut costs, other companies are forced to do so. This needs to end and it will not end without government intervention and regulation."

By the way, Obama reads ten letters a day according to this lovely video: