We’ve been getting a lot of questions and wondering ourselves what can we do now to best advocate for effective health care reform.  If you feel that there is enough at stake and you’re ready for action then the most important thing you can do is get the word out about how you feel.

We’ve put together a few resources to help you do just that:

Congress.org has several resources for taking action now.  Follow the link and you’ll be able to look up your representatives by zip code using a box on the left.  Below that is a set of resources for other actions you can take including finding organizations and other activists.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home

BarackObama.com has a “Healthcare Action Center” with many different resources to support the president in his work.  It includes tools for donating, making calls to people, writing letters to editors and much more.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/health-care-action-center/

PrescriptionForChange.org has an “Act Now” page that helps you email your congressperson.  It starts out with a great letter than you can customize to your liking:

http://www.prescriptionforchange.org/

Our very own Norah Schwartz was interviewed on “These Days” on KPBS on Monday, the third of August.  You can listen to her along with some other guests and callers by following the link below:

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/aug/03/high-cost-healthcare-part-1/

Also if you’ve been following the news lately the House has released the text the following bill: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009

The text is over 1000 pages but you can read an overview and find more information here:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/show

In this web-exclusive Ezekiel Emanuel explains his “Healthcare Guaranteed” plan.

“I think the universal part appeals to the Democrats. The voucher part appeals to Republicans. And I think it should make us one big happy family,” Dr. Emanuel tells David Brancaccio.

The video is about 5 minutes long and is a great resource for those who want an overview of how this very practical plan works.  If you’re interested in learning more you can read Ezekiel Emanuel’s book “Healthcare Guaranteed.”

In moving his Health Care agenda forward President Obama has outlined “8 Principles for Health Care Reform.”  A detailed discussion of these principles can be found in this politico article. In his book “Healthcare Guaranteed” Ezekiel Emanuel also outline “7 Healthcare Goals.”  We believe Ezekiel Emanuel brings some very interesting and workable concepts to the Healthcare Reform discussion.  To help people understand the two sets of ideas better we’ve put together a .pdf which compares Obama’s 8 principals with Emanuel’s 7 goals.  It includes a table presenting the features of Emanuel’s proposed “Guaranteed Healthcare Access System”, which we are encouraging Obama’s health care team to consider, as planning moves forward.  You can download the .pdf here:

Obama’s and Emanuel’s health reform principles compared.pdf

For us it started as numerous individuals who were summoned by the then President-Elect Obama to gather in neighborhood groups with the purpose of changing America from the grassroots up.

There were calls for change in a number of areas – immigration, infrastructure, environment and many more.

Our particular call came from the health care arena, where many of us had either personally borne the pains of our current system, or had family members or friends who had been negatively affected by it.

We met for the first time at the home of a brave and valiant citizen who, herself, was still recovering from ravishes of cancer, and had no insurance due to having used it while being sick and subsequently finding herself uninsurable by the insurance companies.

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