Arlen Specter Pledges To Help Enable State Single-Payer Movement

By Jerry Policoff
August 19, 2009, Erie, PA

Published by OpEd News.

This morning Cindy Purvis, Co-Chair of Healthcare4ALLPA.org, attended a meeting in Erie, Pa. attended by Senator Arlen Specter. In response to a question from Cindy, Senator Specter agreed to sponsor a Senate amendment that would remove any roadblocks that the states might face in enacting single-payer health care. He said he would talk to Governor Ed Rendell about it today.

Now it is time for the rest of us to do our parts. We need to flood the Senator's in box with messages thanking him for making this commitment. His promise to introduce the legislation is a big first step, but we need to make sure he does it, and we need to urge him to fight for its passage.

If you phone the Senator you will likely get a busy signal, and if you get through you will likely be put on hold for a long time before a human being answers the phone. If you e-mail him through his Senate site you will have to go through a lengthy process that requires all your information and requires you to check a line summarizing the reason you are writing. I am sorry to say that you will encounter a similar apparatus on his Specter 2010 web site. I did find an e-mail address on that site buried at the bottom of his Specter2010 web page (in very small print) that I suggest we use (and I might add that the Specter campaign would be well-advised to make it a little simpler for people to communicate with him via e-mail. His staff told me that they were not authorized to provide any e-mail addresses, and the voicemail message I left with someone who I was told was authorized to do that was not returned)

info@Specter2010.com

Or if that does not work try: http://specter2010.com/contact/

Please e-mail Senator Specter, and please pass this message on to everyone you know who is supportive of real health care reform. He needs to hear from us. This is made even more urgent by the apparent demise of the public option as an ingredient of any "reform" that emerges from Washington. On the other hand it is is also an opportunity, because passing single-payer (SB 400/ HB 1660) in Pennsylvania and in other states is now the only real option left to us if we want real healthcare reform where greedy, for-profit insurance companies no longer have their hands in our wallets and are no longer in a position to make life and death decisions based upon on how much they cost.

Thank you Senator Specter!