Lend the President your support on his
health care and health insurance reform agenda

During his campaign, President Obama outlined an aggressive plan to reform our health care system. Key components of his plan include:

• Requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions;
• Establishing tax incentives to encourage small businesses to provide health benefits;
• Requiring large employers that don't offer health benefits to devote funds for employee health care;
• Providing a tax credit for premiums;
• Creating a plan, based on Congress' own benefits, that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable coverage;
• Reduced drug costs and reduced costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and employees;

Millions of Americans are expecting the new administration to push for these reforms, but the administration can't enact them without broad public support to convince a majority of Congressional legislators to demonstrate political courage. That's where you come in.

What can you do? Plenty!

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Make a phone call.

Phone calls can be the most effective method of making your voice heard. Call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or the House switchboard at (202) 225-3121.

TIP: Many organizations sponsor toll-free phone connections to the Congressional switchboard. Google "call Congress toll-free" to find them and be ready with your legislator's name.

Send a letter via fax.

Well-written letters make the strongest impact, but "snail mail" can be significantly delayed by federal screening measures. Fortunately, most legislators post fax numbers on their Web sites. (We've included them in our list of Senators at right.)

TIP: A form letter isn't much better than a signed petition. For more impact, hand write your message or personalize it somehow.

Send an e-mail.

Some legislators take e-mail seriously. Others? Not so much. Your best bet: make your intent obvious in your own Subject line. If you copy someone else's, your e-mail may end up in a SPAM folder.

TIP: Use the contact forms on legislators' sites (their first line of defense against SPAM) and nclude your name, address, and ZIP code to verify that you are a constituent. If you don't, your message will be discarded.

Write a Letter to the Editor.

Your letter printed in your local newspaper may inspire others to pressure their representatives to work for meaningful health insurance reform.

TIP: Make it personal, short, informative and pointed. One or two clever sentences read better than a lengthy opus -- and are more likely to be printed.

Call talk radio.

Talk about your own health care or health insurance struggle, and motivate others to contact their representatives to work for change.

TIP: Radio is a very personal medium. Talk about how difficulty to get health insurance has affected your life. Has it forced you to stay in a dead-end job? Has it caused financial difficulty?

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Health reform advocacy groups

Find out what these other advocates for change are doing to work toward universal coverage -- and consider joining an effort you deem worthwhile.

The Campaign for an American Solution – a grassroots effort whose mission is to build support for workable health care reform. The Campaign recently conducted a national listening tour in which health plans and Americans from all walks of life had candid, transparent discussions about how we can work together to improve health care.

Community Catalyst – a national, nonprofit health care advocacy organization, dedicated to strengthening the voice of health care consumers and building stronger state and regional networks to drive health policy and system change.

Consumer Voices for Coverage – a joint initiative of Robert Wood Johnson and Community Catalyst to strengthen the consumer voice to promote innovative and comprehensive health care coverage for everyone.

Cover the Uninsured – a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national effort to highlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and to demand solutions from our nation's leaders.

Doctors for America – a national grassroots organization that engages physicians in health reform efforts and works to share physicians’ ideas and experiences with Congress and the public in order to fashion the best possible solution to the nation's current health care crisis.

Everybody In, Nobody Out – a national organization advocating a single-payer health care system.

FamiliesUSA – a national nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

Health Care for America NOW – a national grassroots campaign organizing millions of Americans to win a guarantee of quality, affordable health care for all.

Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Health Care – works to increase grassroots labor support for H.R. 676 as an essential element in winning the support of Congress to enact the National Health Care Act "Medicare for All" as the public policy of this country.

Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care – a national alliance for single-payer health care reform with publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare for all. The coalition promotes comprehensive reform legislation to guarantee health care for all Americans as a basic human right.

National Coalition on Health Care – a national alliance working to improve America's health care by pushing for affordable health care for all Americans.

National Coalition on Health Care – a national alliance working to improve America's health care by pushing for affordable health care for all Americans.

Nine-Nine-Oh-Nine! – an organization dedicated to educating citizens about health and health care in the United States and an advocate of a single-payer health care system as proposed in H.R. 676.

Physicians for a National Health Program – a non-profit research and education organization of 15,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance.

UHCAN! The Universal Health Care Action Network -- a group of individuals and organizations committed to achieving health coverage for all Americans. Their Web site provides resources and shares information regarding the development of strategies for health care justice from the consumer's point of view.

http://www.healthinsurance.org/