Open Letter To Congressman Harry Mitchell Regarding Health Care Reform

On Tuesday, the Democrats in the U.S. House introduced a health care reform package. It will be considered and marked up by three committee (Energy and Commerce, Education and Labor, and Ways and Means) before reaching the House floor.

That floor vote is expected to occur before the House's summer break.

The Senate is expected to vote on its package by the summer break also, allowing the two chambers to reconcile their packages and handle final passage sometime early in the fall.

As such, this is an opportune time to contact my representative, Congressman Harry Mitchell.

The letter I wrote, submitted via his contact page -

Dear Congressman Mitchell.

Thank you for the great work you have been doing to represent the people of Scottsdale and Tempe. You may not hear it about it as much as you should, but your constituents appreciate your committment to them.

Tonight I am writing to urge you to support the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.

Lobbyists are spending millions of dollars everyday to convince you and your colleagues that a "public option" should not be part of any health care reform package.

National polls show that more than 2/3 of Americans have a different opinion (http://tcf.org/publications/healthcare/wtprw.healthcare.pdf)

The individual people in your district (and your colleagues' districts) don't have the resources to fund and conduct national TV and print ad campaigns or to flood Representatives' offices with mass-produced post cards and letters.

More importantly, too many of your constituents also don't have the resources to pay for adequate medical care under the current system.


What they do have is you, their elected representative.


To be sure, any bill produced by the legislative process will have aspects you (and I) will be less than enthusiastic about.

Unless one or more of those aspects is *utterly* unacceptable, it would be good to keep in mind something first said by Voltaire and used by Secretary of State (then Senator) Clinton at last year's Democratic Convention in Denver when discussing health care reform -

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

Again, thank you for everything you have done for the people of the Fifth District.

Regards,

[cpmaz]

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has a good resource page on the proposal here.

CQPolitics' summary is here.

Later...