For Immediate Release

October 6, 2009

Contact: Mark Gallagher, 781-396-2900

http://markey.house.gov

Markey To Host Health Care Reform Town Hall Meeting This Monday

Medford, MA – U.S. Representative Edward J. Markey (D-Malden), a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, today announced that he will host a health care reform town hall meeting this Monday evening in Arlington.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is one of three committees with jurisdiction over health care policy. In the coming weeks, the House will consider landmark health care reform legislation.

“We are embarking on an historic debate on a long-overdue effort to reform our nation’s health care system,” said Markey. “It is important for me to present the case for this vital legislation to my constituents and listen to their thoughts and concerns as the House is preparing to vote.”

WHO:            Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Malden)

WHAT:          Health Care Reform Town Hall

WHEN:          6:30 p.m. EST, Monday, October 12, 2009

WHERE:         Arlington Town Hall, 730 Massachusetts Avenue

Representative John Tierney has scheduled two upcoming town hall meetings in the North Shore, which will focus on health reform. Representative Tierney has been one of the champions on the House of single payer reform and a strong public option. If you live in his district, please attend these forums to support Rep Tierney, as across the country these town hall meetings have been extremely important expressions of public opinion, and have been hotly contested. Your vocal presence WILL make a difference.

Here are details on the North Shore meetings:

Saturday, October 10th, 10 am - 11:30 am, doors open at 9:30 am
Salem State, Main Stage Auditorium (seats 750 people)

Monday, October 12th, 7 pm - 8:30 pm, doors at 6:30 pm
North Shore Community College, DANVERS campus, Berry Building (seats 200 people)

Last night President Obama delivered a powerful speech on health reform to a joint session of Congress. The President was able to articulate the reasons so many of us put our time, our passion, and our heart into changing this health care system, which needlessly harms so many. We share the President’s vision, but we write to you with real concern about the road-map laid out in the President’s speech, as all too often in the United States our policy has proven inadequate to meet our ambitions.  Below: the good and the bad in President Obama’s address. (more…)

Representative Barney Frank, who has been a strong supporter of single payer reform and an active member of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, is holding a second town hall meeting in Wellesley this Saturday, September 12, 2PM at Mass Bay Community College. If you are from Rep Frank’s district or know someone who is, please attend this town hall meeting and thank the Representative for continuing to support single payer reform, and advancing the movement to make health care a right this Congressional session. Also, please ask Rep Frank if he will support the Weiner amendment, which would replace the current bill in the House with the single payer bill, and if he will support the Kucinich amendment, which would allow states like Massachusetts to experiment with single payer reform and receive necessary federal waivers.

(more…)

Labor Day comes every year, but the opportunity to cure our country’s ailing health care system comes once in a lifetime!

Join with more than 2,000 expected allies from across the state in a march and rally to show our support for real health care reform. Come out to help send our elected officials back to work in Washington D.C. with a message from the people of Massachusetts: we want health care that puts people before profits, and we want it now!

Monday, September 7th

11:00 A.M.

Rally at Boston Common

(near the Gazebo)

There are a couple of weeks left in the August recess, which is when Congress is out-of-session, and our Representatives and Senators return to their districts to speak with constituents. As you have probably heard by now, this has been an opportunity for groups trying to defeat health care reform to mobilize residents around town hall meetings, and to raise unfounded fears about government playing a role in our health care system. Mass-Care participated in an extremely effective counter-mobilization outside Congressman Tierney’s office in Peabody, where a large coalition of labor, community, health care, and faith organizations turned out 150 people to support Rep Tierney’s work backing single payer and a strong public option. (more…)

Ask Whole Foods to Support

Real Health Care Reform!!

Whole Foods Chief Executive John Mackey has declared that health-care is not a basic human right, and the privilege of being healthy is only for people who can afford it.

Join us this Friday August 21^st as we inform Whole Foods customers about the company’s efforts to stall real reform, and let Chief Executive John Mackey know that we will fight for everyone to have quality, affordable health care.

Friday August 21^st

Framingham

12pm - 2pm

Whole Foods

575 Worcester Rd

Cambridge

4:30pm – 5:30pm

Whole Foods

115 Prospect Street, Central Square

For more information, contact:

Framingham: Jim Carvalho, UFCW 1445

781.727.9036, jim_carvalho@yahoo.com

Cambridge: Jake Williams, Mass Jobs With Justice

860.281.9792, jake@massjwj.net

As you have probably heard, opponents of health reform have been disrupting town hall meetings with Congresspeople around the country, perpetuating sensational and inaccurate claims about the impacts of public health insurance. The groups behind this effort - largely bankrolled by the health care industry - have called for a rally outside of Representative John Tierney’s Peabody district office tomorrow, Thursday the 13th, at 1PM. (more…)

Yesterday the Boston Globe wrote a factually inaccurate editorial titled “Mass bashers take note: Health reform is working,” and we need you to write a letter to the editor asking the Globe to correct their mistake and take the sustainability of health reform seriously:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/08/05/mass_bashers_take_note_health_reform_is_working/ (more…)

An Open Letter to Bill Keller, Executive Editor, New York Times, and Clark Hoyt, Public Editor, New York Times

Dear Bill Keller and Clark Hoyt – For the first time in the span of a generation, national health care reform is back on the horizon, and I’m writing to you to step back for a moment into the history of the Times’s reporting on health care reform. Last year I began a research project with two researchers from Harvard Medical School, Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, to look at the history of major state health reforms such as TennCare, the Oregon Health Plan, MinnesotaCare, and many others. A sweeping health reform bill had been passed into law in Massachusetts in 2006 that was being hailed as a unique, first-of-its-kind bipartisan strategy to achieve universal or near-universal health coverage without raising taxes or adding new regulations on the health care industry. We initially set out to find how unique the Massachusetts health reform law really was compared to previous state efforts, and to see if by analyzing the outcomes of those earlier reform efforts we could learn some lessons about what to expect in Massachusetts.

What we found surprised us (more…)