The left needs to walk and chew gum at the same time.

[John Q. Citizen]

While we are organizing to elect Obama president, we also need to be consecutively organizing for a more acceptable health care plan so that as soon as Obama is elected we are ready to start pushing for real and true Universal Health Care (the kind the insurance companies can never deliver.)

I have been talking about this with some local activists here in the Missoula, MT area and here is some of the ideas I've heard.

1. The grass roots needs to focus on outcomes. Instead of demanding "single payer" and being ignored or marginalized, we should instead demand outcomes that we can and will live with. These outcomes need to include, at a minimum, that health care and insurance is

1.affordable
2.accessible to everyone regardless of economic status
3.ChoicePeople can choose their care provider and change their care provider
4. the plan must cover services from preventative to comprehensive care, emergency to long term care.

By NOT coming up with a specific plan but instead focusing on outcomes, we can avoid anticipated market based attacks on a single payer plan. We can organize people around everyone's health insurance needs instead of around a politically charged label. And we can organize people regardless of which candidates they naturally gravitate toward.

In some very real ways, Montana will play a major role in health care reform because of our US Senator, Max Baucus, who chairs committees that will determine what the plan will be. Currently Max claims single payer is off the table. Fine, Then come up with a different plan that meets the outcome criteria and lets move forward Max.

As anyone who has studied the issue will know, there is no other plan except 'single payer fee for service' that will achieve those outcomes. So instead of demanding a plan with a label, lets approach this by demanding outcomes without a label. This is how we can educate people on what can achieve these outcomes, and how we can move the powers that be toward those outcomes.

We should flat out use the grassroots Obama campaign as an organizing tool to achieve a plan that includes those outcomes. What better grassroots voice to sway the next president could there be?

Toward those ends, our local Obama volunteers are meeting monthly to discuss and organize around both electing Obama, and to organize now around what we are going to do once we get him elected.

[SeaLyons]

1. Add regardless of pre-conditions to your list....

I see health care as the single most important issue, and if the democratic party can get this done it will be a tremendous accomplishment.

[John Q. Citizen]

2. That would fall under accessiblity. Pre-existing conditions is such a scam.

Right now, MT Senator Max Baucus is probably one of the most powerful people in congress when it comes to what kind of plan we eventually get.

He has already said that single payer is not an option. Fine. So let him come up with a plan that meets the outcome criteria that isn't single payer. That I'd like to see.

As I'm sure you are aware, no for-profit insurance company in the world is going to insure for a pre-existing condition. That's not the way to make your stock-holders a bundle.

[SeaLyons]

3. do you think any form of universal health care

will get done in the next 4 years??

[John Q. Citizen]

4. Only if people demand it. It could be done in 6 months if enough people demanded it.

It is going to take the citizens putting the pressure on our elected officials.