Health Care Action for Monday

A number of Blue Dog democrats are holding up the health care bill in Henry Waxman's House Energy and Commerce Committee refusing to vote it out of committee. This is one of the three House committees which are working on the health care bill (referred to, often, as the tri-committe for the three committees and tri-care for the resulting bill).

These Blue Dogs (BDs), for various reasons, could side with republicans to crush the health care bill. We cannot let that happen. There are seven BDs on this committee that need to be targeted tomorrow through Tuesday, but preferably tomorrow (Monday, July 20).

The next action is to use a letter writing form tool to connect with newspapers that can help influence these legislators. The form tool will send automatically to the various papers, and is VERY easy to use.

1. Click on the legislators below, that will link you to the form tool for that legislator.
2. Fill in the contact information, EVEN if you are NOT in that legislator's state. Be sure and do your own legislator, however, if they ARE on the list.
3. Click through to begin the letter. PLEASE customize and personalize your letters... this is VERY important. Editorial page editors can sniff letter writing campaigns a mile away (so we are told by former editors!), so customize all letters. Use the points suggested aside each letter. Take one or two points and mix it up! CUSTOMIZE!
4. Send your letter, go to the next legislator on the list and start over!

This is a critical step because if we cannot get at least TWO of these Blue Dogs off the fence, they are expected to provide amendments to KILL the health care bills or add time/issue triggers that seriously weaken the bill.

Rep. John Barrow (D-GA)
Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR)
Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN)
Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN)
Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT)
Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA)
Rep. Zachary Space (D-OH)

Please write these letters today and e-mail a link to this post to anyone you like, or just lift it entirely for your own blog!

Let's get this done!

PS... If you do NOT have a rep on this list, please be sure to address both Rep Barrow and Rep Space. These two legislators may be the most movable at the moment.

Thanks to slink at dKos and everyone at FireDogLake for doing such wonderful work on this issue and helping to organize support for these bills!