Continue to call the Senate:
When you call a Senate office, ask to speak to the relevant Health Legislative Assistant. Hey look, a list of staffer names! 18/ pic.twitter.com/UQ0yZNaSxc
— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) June 8, 2017
The ask is simple — no bill that leads to coverage losses.
eclare
Posted last night that AARP aired an ad here in TN during Colbert to call Corker. I am calling him and Alexander today. Am hoping AARP would not waste money on a lost cause.
low-tech cyclist
I don’t see any Dems on that list. Are we not supposed to be talking to their Health Legislative Assistants?
Tenar Arha
@low-tech cyclist: I think the corollaries to “call these policy people with your story of how their planned changes will hurt you” and “call your Dem Reps to say thank you for your support” is probably “please don’t call Dem policy experts because they already know what could happen to you…” or anyway something like that.
MomSense
I’m so mad. I swear they are saying call volume is low because it is impossible to reach a human being. You get stuck with a bunch of props that lead you to a mailbox full message. So I’m pretty sure all my futile attempts fail. At lunch I will call the DC numbers and state office numbers again.
I’m calling Collins so I feel confident in saying this is some bullshit fuckery on her part. Her big reason for popularity was her constituent services. Before Dolt 45 you would never call her office and get just menu prompts, voicemail, or voicemail box full messages. I swear that this is intentional. I believe that she is trying to suppress voter feedback and I’m furious.
MomSense
@MomSense:
I can’t edit right now but props should be prompts.
Tenar Arha
@low-tech cyclist: oops ran out of time…
ETA That’s not to say they might not need ammo later. So definitely when you call your Dem Rep let them know that you have a story of how you could be harmed & that you voluntarily would let them use it. I really hope I’m making sense here…
Knight of Nothing
I am not the greatest on the phone, and I was dissatisfied with the last couple of calls to my representatives, so I drafted a letter instead. Feel free to copy some/all as a template. http://knightofnothing.blogspot.com/2017/06/dear-senator-fight-ahca-with-everything.html
StringOnAStick
I called Gardner again, both local and DC office and of course it goes immediately to voice mail, as usual. I’m hoping at some point someone goes through the voice mail and tallies the calls, but given that rethugs lie about everything I’m having my doubts. Still, I will call every day this week.
low-tech cyclist
I’m gonna say it again: while we should thank our Dem Senators for their commitment to vote against the Senate bill, we should be asking more of them than just that.
The Senate runs on unanimous consent. The Dems should withhold consent until either the Senate bill is published well in advance of a vote, or until hearings take place on the bill in advance of a vote.
Right now, the health care bill is completely absent from the newspaper headlines, and is equally absent from other major media. GOP Senators aren’t going to hear much from their constituents about a bill that isn’t in the news. It’s the Dems’ job to get it into the news. Withholding unanimous consent is one thing they can do. Will any of them do it?
I have called my Senators to make this ask. I urge the rest of you with Dem Senators do the same.
Knight of Nothing
@low-tech cyclist: +1. I made this the focus of my letter, because in my senators I have two solid “no” votes.
trnc
@MomSense: send a fax if you can’t leave a voice mail.
Mike Toreno
Say that the present bill is mean and they should rewrite it to be more generous. Ask them if they support Trump’s agenda or not.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
Totally on purpose.
Barbara
@MomSense: You can get a free fax sent as well. Or pay $1.99 per fax to avoid the cover sheet with the fax company’s logo. I feel a little helpless. I have already called my representatives and sent faxes to Senators (which seems okay because they will never vote for this bill). I also have contacted Senator Toomey on behalf of my mother. But really, we need people from Maine, Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, West Virginia and Arizona in particular to make calls. If I had to forecast, McConnell will “allow” Collins and Heller to hide in order to get to 50 so Pence can break the tie.
rikyrah
@low-tech cyclist:
Thanks for this advice.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Send a fax if you can’t leave a message.
If you can’t send a fax (and some people are reporting that their Republican reps have turned off their fax machines, too), bring a letter to her local office, preferably with some (calm!) friends in tow.
If the office is closed, staple or tape the letter to the door.
Barbara
@MomSense: Collins has always been a complete fraud. She has been able to hide it in years past. When that didn’t work anymore, her response seems to be to clap her hands over her ears or, increasingly, find another well-paid government gig that doesn’t require her to stick her neck out in order not to be considered a traitor to her constituents. Increasingly, I think she is just a coward at heart.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Also, too, send a letter to the editor to your local paper and the largest paper in the state. Ask why Sen. Collins is avoiding her constituents and why she’s afraid to talk to you.
SatanicPanic
@low-tech cyclist: Sounds like a worthwhile effort
MomSense
I’m sending faxes! It’s just really maddening because she was the pride of the senate for her fucking constituent services until she might actually have to deal with the consequences of being a lock step republican psychopath.
I’m sooooo done with her.
Barbara
@MomSense: That’s what I mean. She either took cover in being part of a larger Republican majority where her deviant positions were tolerated because they were ineffectual, or in the opposite, where there were more Dems and no one needed her to stand up for them. So now, Republicans have a slender majority and her vote really makes a difference and she is hiding under her bed whimpering because people expect her to do something, looking for any way out.
Barbara
@low-tech cyclist: I will call my senators and ask them to do this.
eclare
AARP advocacy number 1-844-833-9667. You enter your zip code and then select which senator you want to talk to. Got right through to Alexander, spoke with a staffperson. Told him my opinion, staffperson countered with the senate bill will be much different than the house, and you’ll be happy with it. I asked, if I’m going to be so happy with it, why is it a big secret? He actually said, I kid you not, that’s a good question.
Fucking asshole senator. Will try Corker again later this afternoon.
brendancalling
I’ve called both. I’ve also started following them on Twitter, and have added the hashtag #meanoldmanLamar to everything I send to Lamar Alexander (who is on the super-secret repeal committee).
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
FWIW, I included a short version of your story in the fax I just sent to Dianne Feinstein. If you hear her talk about a mother of 3 in Maine who has a blood disorder, that’ll be you! ?
(Hopefully I didn’t get the number of your kids wrong!)
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks, Mnem!
Linda
Forget it. Portman’s phone goes to automatic message. The coward.
MomSense
@StringOnAStick: @Linda:
That’s three of them. Those motherfuckers. I think we need to find out if all of them are switching to voicemail only phone systems.
Laura
@StringOnAStick: semi off topic, how’s your spouse?
I’ve been thinking of you this week after having seen my dad last week -he’s got CLL, though the COPD and Melanoma are the primary health issues of late.
StringOnAStick
@Laura: Hi Laura. My husband is doing fine physically, so far (knock on wood, since I can’t conceive of life without him). The hematologist called it “mild CLL” and we really only caught it because he gets a full physical every year; he’s still exercising as hard as he ever did – we climbed a 14,000′ peak last weekend to ski it, I did it once and he did it 2.5 times. For the next 12 months it is blood work every 3 months to see what the rate of change is, then maybe dropping to a lower frequency while we watch for symptoms like easy bruising or bloody noses. He’s 59 so getting diagnosed at this young an age means he is likely to need some kind of treatment at some point according to the doctor.
Emotionally he’s handling it well, while I’m the one who has had to try very hard to come to some sort of accommodation with this new factor in our lives. When I see or hear for-profit cancer center ads I want to smash the TV, and my perspective on certain words or jokes just isn’t the same. The main issue is that he wanted to leave his job next January and contract for them for 3 days a week, but we’ve got 5 years until Medicare kicks in (if that doesn’t change). In a way it is a good thing we found this out before, but we could have maybe gotten health insurance without this pre-existing condition too, though I know insurance companies will got through records to deny claims and his WBC has been trending up for 3 years. Now the market for individual health insurance is so full of uncertainty I doubt we have any options at all. He’s burned out at work and had been planning this job status change for a long time. I haven’t pushed him on it yet because I think he is still processing this new reality, but I am fearful that he still wants to quit next winter and see what we can find for insurance; that’s obviously not a good idea at all but he isn’t nearly as well informed on health care and politics as we are here on this blog. He recently told me that he isn’t planning to make any decisions until next winter. I’m an RDH but with bad hands so there is no way I could work full time and get health insurance for us that way, something I feel pretty guilty about right now. We both worked and saved so we could retire early, and then the *Resident got elected and that idea blew away in the wind. I’m grateful for the good insurance we have through his job since that’s providing me with a therapist to talk to about all this right now.
I hope your dad is doing as well as he can and that his quality of life is good. Thanks for your concern.
low-tech cyclist
OK, here’s something else that those of us with Dem Senators can ask for.
What the guy at the link is saying is:
1) The upside of passing a bill via reconciliation is that you only need 50 votes + veep.
2) But the downside is the vote-a-rama: literally unlimited amendments may be offered.
3) Each amendment must be introduced with a speech, and then voted on.
4) Even if each speech+vote takes only 10 minutes, suppose the Dems offered THOUSANDS of amendments?
5) Even if Mitch keeps the floor open 24/7, there’s only 10,080 minutes in a week.
6) Each thousand amendments would delay the ultimate vote by a week (at least), while the bill stays in the news the whole time.
7) So the Dems should figure out how they can offer several thousand distinct amendments. Then do it!
So we should ask each of our Dem Senators to author and submit 100 amendments to the GOP bill.
If every Dem Senator did this, there would be no vote before August, even if they don’t take a recess.
low-tech cyclist
Actually, this guy is proposing 40,000 amendments, which given (a) a limit to how long the GOP can provide a quorum 24/7, and (b) normal recesses, should suffice to keep this thing filibustered by amendment until the next Congress begins. I’d be good with that.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@low-tech cyclist: This seems too good to be true. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong. Would love to hear some people with more expertise chime in.
randy khan
@low-tech cyclist:
That could be fun – start with an amendment to kill off the tax cuts and use them for deficit reduction (if that works under reconciliation). Next, a Medicare-for-all amendment, funded by the taxes that the bill would cut. Etc., etc.
randy khan
@low-tech cyclist:
Forgetting the delaying tactic issue, there are a lot of amendments Dems could propose to force Republicans to vote on things they’d rather not vote on – mandating coverage of pregnancy and birth control, full-pre-existing condition coverage, and not cutting Medicaid at all come to mind off the top of my head.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Barbara: The only good things she ever did were vote for the stimulus and for Dodd-Frank. Otherwise she is an utter waste.
quantum man
I am a first time poster who has followed Balloon Juice for a few years now. I have a suggestion for when you contact your senators. This concerns the estimated 23 million who will lose health insurance. It is hard to imagine 23 million people. This helps. By my calculations, if everyone of those 23 million stood “butt to belly button” in a line, it would stretch from New York City to Los Angeles, and then 80% of the way back to New York City. Tell the person on the phone this, and then point out each of those 23 million has family, loved ones, and all will suffer to a greater or lesser extent. Maybe this can help in some way.
Miss Bianca
@MomSense: btw, I used talking points that you kindly posted a few weeks back, when I was struggling with what to say to my rep about the AHCA, in various communications to Senator Gardner (including a LTTE in my local paper). Hoping it helps, and thanks again!
@Knight of Nothing: Ooh, I’m gonna steal these points for my letter to Senator Bennett.