How Do You Know If Your Congresscritter Is Worth Rehiring Or Needs To Be Replaced?

Yesterday NYC Congressman Jerrold Nadler made a 20 second video (above) declaring that he supports inclusion of the public option in health care reform and that he opposes any health care legislation that excludes it. Blue America supported Congressman Nadler's re-election campaign last year, in part because of clear, principled stands like this.

Last year Blue America also supported the successful election of Jeff Merkley against Oregon's ultra-sleazy corporate shill Gordon Smith. Jeff has been one of the most outspoken and persistent supporters of real health care reform on the HELP Committee, a real tribune for ordinary Oregon working families. If you have a Republican senator or one like Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter, Evan Bayh or even Dianne Feinstein, playing footsie with the Big Money boys at the Insurance Industry they're probably not making arguments like this one Senator Merkley sent out to his constituents yesterday:

At the beginning of July, I held town hall meetings in Umatilla, Polk, Clackamas, Linn, Marion, and Multnomah Counties. At each meeting, the most prominent issue of concern was health care. 

People of all walks of life are paying dramatically more for health care than they used to. These high costs are hurting our families and our small businesses. Last year, we spent 17 percent of our gross domestic product on health care; in the last nine years, costs have doubled for the average family. In May, Oregon’s largest insurer announced that the average small business premium was going up 14.7 percent-- on top of a 26 percent increase last year. Health care costs are an increasing drag on our economy and the pocketbooks of working families. 

In my role on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, I’ve been working with my colleagues on a plan for health care reform that will lower costs, provide consumers with more choices, and increase competition.

The change would work like this: Americans who are happy with their current health plan can keep it.  But if you don’t like your plan and you want to look at other options, we’re going to make sure you have a choice of quality, affordable health plans. This will lower costs and it will also force insurance companies to provide better services to their customers. 

One of those options will be a community health insurance plan offered by the federal government. This public option will be an additional choice to increase competition, lower prices, and keep insurance companies honest, so families won’t be entirely at the mercy of the insurance companies. Most Oregonians I’ve talked to-- and about three-quarters of Americans according to the polls-- like the idea of having a choice of what type of plan they want rather than having the federal government make that decision for them.

Over the next few months, we’ll be engaging in a nationwide discussion about the direction of health care in our country.  We’ll have before us a choice between a system that gets more and more expensive every year, leaves middle class families one pink slip from losing their health coverage, and makes our businesses less competitive, or an improved model that increases health care options, expands care, and lowers costs. I don’t think we can afford to do nothing.

We have a once in a generation opportunity to remake our health care system for the better. I invite you to contact my office and talk to your friends and family about your opinion because we can only enact real change if you make your voices heard.

If you're not hearing this kind of thing from your congressmembers, you're being shortchanged and your employees aren't doing a good job and aren't serving your interests. You should think about firing them-- or maybe just helping us fire Blanche Lincoln, one of the worst of the duplicitous Democrats taking immense sums of money from the Medical-Industrial Complex CEOs and voting for their interests instead of Arkansas voters' interests. Sad how the same reactionary Republicans with a handful of corrupt Democrats opposing health care reform are the very same political hacks opposing financial reform too. Watch Elizabeth Warren on Rachel Maddow tonight and try to keep what she sends in mind when you think about voting next year: