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Message from Missouri Health Care for All:

TAKE ACTION!

Our Missouri Health Care for All Principles call for policies that assure access to health care regardless of where someone lives or how much money she makes. The President and Congressional leaders are considering proposals to reduce federal spending, and some of these proposals would slash funding for Missouri's Health Centers as well as drastically cut critically important programs like Medicaid.

Community Health Centers in Missouri include the reduced cost clinics that serve more than 180 local communities. These critical Centers serve more than 400,000 Missourians every year and are important health and economic assets in our communities.

The National Association of Community Health Centers NACHC needs our phone calls to federal elected officials to ask for their support of Community Health Centers. Since Congress is negotiating federal spending, right now, we need you to make calls TODAY!

Please use the NACHC toll-free Advocacy Hotline to make this as simple as possible. You will only need to call 1-866-456-3949 one time and you will automatically be connected to your Representative and both Senator Blunt and McCaskill. We also ask that you call the White House Comment Line at 1-202-456-1111 and leave a message for the President asking for his support of Community Health Centers.

TAKE ACTION!

1) Call Your Members of Congress: Use the toll free NACHC Advocacy Hotline at 1-866-456-3949 and tell Your Representative AND BOTH Senators: “Do not undermine the successful Health Centers program as you negotiate Medicaid changes and cuts to the federal budget. The health and lives of our families and our neighbors should not be negotiated away. I am counting on your support for my Community Health Center.”

a. You only need to call the Advocacy Hotline ONE TIME -- stay on the line at the end of each conversation to be automatically connected to your next policymaker.

2) Call the White House Comment Line at 1-202-456-1111 and leave a message for the President saying: Do not undermine the successful Health Centers program as you negotiate Medicaid changes and cuts to the federal budget. The health and lives of our families and our neighbors should not be negotiated away. I am counting on your support for my Community Health Center.

a. When you call the White House Comment line it may take a few moments to be connected to a LIVE OPERATOR, but you WILL be connected and be able to leave a message with a LIVE person

Important Rally at Senator McCaskill's Office Friday to Protect the Federal Budget

The main weakness of Todd Akin and Sarah Steelman is that they will be forced by extremists in the Republican Party to demand cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and other programs that people rely on for their well-being. But this is only a weakness if Senator McCaskill stands up for these programs and the wishes of the vast majority of the population. So this rally I just heard about sounds like a great idea:

We are rallying to persuade Senator McCaskill to meet with community stakeholders regarding the current proposed federal budget.

Friday, June 17 4-5 pm Senator McCaskill's office 5850 Delmar Ave., St. Louis 63112

The current proposed federal budget has massive cuts to vital federal public services, programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and to public employee wages. We must fight to protect critical health and retirement programs.

This event is sponsored by Missouri Jobs with Justice, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), Missouri Health Care for All, Missouri Pro-Vote, The Missouri Budget Project, and Metropolitan Congregations United.

We will ask Senator McCaskill to oppose any legislation that will continue tax breaks for the very rich and big corporations at the expense of federal workers and the services they provide. Missouri's veterans, farmers, and working families depend on government services, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and others. A cut to the federal budget and workforce is a cut to Missouri! Join us in asking Senator McCaskill to stand strong against the proposed cuts to Federal Services!

Bring your friends, neighbors, family and co-workers - people you know who benefit from Federal programs

If you can't make the rally, you can send McCaskill a message here.

Wagman: McCaskill Voting To Protect Middle Class Is "Cultivating An Image"

Ed Martin is running for something, and that inevitably means that his buddy Jake Wagman at the Post-Dispatch will be publishing a string of nonstop attacks on Martin's opponents. This past week, Wagman has been stretching out the McCaskill-paying-her-taxes-late story with a eye for trivial details that was never applied to, for example, Roy Blunt. Today's hit piece was questioning whether Claire McCaskill's wealth would be a liability for her.

Here's the most absurd part:

That type of financial wherewithal is a stark contrast to the image McCaskill has cultivated in nearly three decades of politics in Missouri — where she has traveled the state in an RV and stumped with her mother — and in Washington, where she has fought to increase the minimum wage and railed against Wall Street bonuses.

Actually, voting for the minimum wage and railing against Wall Street bonuses are not "cultivating an image." They are standing up for members of the non-leisure class.

But this is exactly what's wrong with our modern media, and with Jake Wagman in particular. The media is supposed to inform the citizens about issues that matter. Of course, what really matters are the policies under discussion and the effects those policies would have on people's lives. But this is precisely what the modern media does not want to discuss, for a number of reasons. First of all, it's hard work to understand policy, and some reporters are stretched thin and others are busy watching the Cardinals. Second, describing policy opens them up to charges of "bias" from people who have an interest in distorting reality. Thus, today's media adopts the cowardly position of "Democrats say this, Republicans say that," on all policy issues, and then does "investigative reporting" on relatively trivial issues like whether McCaskill has money. When I say "relatively trivial," of course I realize that having a lot of money can affect someone's judgment; however, it's not nearly as important as the actual political positions a person takes. Senator McCaskill's track record has consistently been one of standing up for the middle-class (at least, relative to the current D.C environment).

So here we are, with a mainstream media that inevitably focuses on the trivial while leaving readers uninformed about the actual issues. And this plays right into the Republican Party's hands since, after all, an informed public would never tolerate Republican's nonstop pandering to corporate giants who screw consumers, screw taxpayers, and don't even live up to their own stated ideology of "loving free markets."

In Defense of McCaskill on Health Care Reform

There's been a lot of criticism of Senator McCaskill's recent statements about health care reform suggesting that she's "moving to the center" or "selling out" by saying that she's looking for alternatives to the invindual mandate. In fact, Rachel Maddow has now promised to mail a cardboard cutout of Blanche Lincoln to McCaskill to remind her of the futility of Democrats trying to pretend they are Republicans.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is clever and fun, but I actually disagree with Maddow's reading of McCaskill's statements. What Claire has said is that she would look to see if there are other alternatives to the mandate that would accomplish the things she wants accomplished in the health care bill. Here's a specific quote from Politico:

In an interview, McCaskill said she’d “love to” modify the mandate and is “looking at different ways to try to” extend coverage without a mandate.

“We’re running numbers to see how many new people we can get into the pool with something less than a mandate, something that would be more limited enrollment periods with severe financial penalties for not signing up.”

McCaskill added that an alternative “may not be workable; it may be that the mandate is the only way we can do it. But I think we should explore it.”

She also was quoted as follows:

“I’m not worried about the politics of this; I’m worried about the substance of it,” McCaskill said. “My goal has always been pretty simple: affordable, accessible, private-market insurance for people in America who want insurance. The politics of this are hard; it’s just easier to stay focused on the substance because that’s what matters.”

So the real question is, what are the good things about the health care bill that she's trying to protect while "looking into" other options? I think, as she's stated many many times, those good things include expanding insurance coverage to the people who need it and making sure that people with preexisting conditions can get coverage. And remember, the point of the mandate is to have enough people buying insurance that the insurance companies can afford to cover others, including people with preexisting conditions:

Senator McCaskill: Uh, I mean, the mandate obviously is the most unpopular part, but, um, when you ask people if they want to do away with preexisting conditions they say, well of course, that's so unfair. Well, who's gonna buy insurance before they're sick. You can't do away with preexisting conditions unless you set up an environment where everyone has insurance.

So McCaskill has always expressed reservations about the mandate, but has stated that it appears to be necessary for protecting the good parts of the bill that outweigh the negatives of the mandate.

And let's be honest: the mandate does suck when considered by itself. The idea that we have to pay the same greedy insurance companies who screwed us in the first place is pretty disturbing. In fact, it was so disturbing that progressives like Markos Moulitsas and Howard Dean were originally against the health care reform bill that featured a mandate without a public option. But they eventually relented for the same reasons Claire and pretty much everyone else who supports the current bill signed on: the bill, which ultimately is an extremely positive step, would not be able to accomplish the good things without the minor annoyance of the mandate.

So now what is McCaskill saying? She's saying she's looking into ways of accomplishing the good things without the negative of the individual mandate. And if we're being honest, I think many people would agree that if we could have the good things without the mandate, the health care bill would be better overall. However, most of us just question whether it's actually possible to take care of preexisting conditions without the mandate (at least, in this system where there are not public options available). So McCaskill says she's looking into other options, and that there might not actually be any other options to accomplish the good things, and I think she's right. But most of the other criticism on this issue, in my opinion, is simply reading too much into her words.

However, if Maddow would like to mail Claire the Blanche Lincoln cutout because of her spending cap suggestions, I'm all for it!