Health care reform pitch gets personal
WASHINGTON -- Volunteers who fueled President Obama's election are now trying their hand at health care policy by telling stories.
Organizing for America, the Democratic group drawn from Obama's campaign e-mail lists, is busy collecting chronicles about the existing health care system: People who have lost their insurance, can't pay their medical bills, or see their businesses threatened by rising costs.
The hope is that the weight of testimony will pressure Congress into translating Obama's vision for health care reform into legislation. It is a test for the volunteer organization that figures to be part of Obama's re-election effort in 2012.
"We aren't selling a candidate this time, we're selling an issue," said Robin Deters, an Organizing for America volunteer in Toledo, Ohio.
Keith Appell, spokesman for a group that opposes nationalized health care insurance, said you can't underestimate the potential of a Democratic interest group that claims millions of members and cranked out the vote for Obama. But Appell, whose group Conservatives for Patients' Rights promotes a free market of doctors and health care plans, added it's a lot easier to get voters to the polls at election time than to get politicians to agree on a complex piece of legislation.
"Now that the paradigm has shifted into governing, it's become a lot more difficult," he said.
Organizing for America, which stumped for Obama's stimulus plan this year, conducted a health care kickoff June 6.
In coffee shops and living rooms across the country, volunteers watched a video in which Obama urged them to promote his three health care principles: reducing costs, allowing people to keep the insurance they have and assuring quality and affordable care for all Americans.
On June 27, volunteers are planning events nationwide. The schedule includes a healthy-food walk in Muncie, Ind., a seminar on writing persuasive letters to Congress in Wauwatosa, Wis., and a blood drive in High Point, N.C. In the weeks ahead, they also will be working phone banks and walking neighborhoods to drum up support.
Along the way, people will be recording their experiences with the current health care system. "The most powerful thing we have at the grass-roots level is people's stories," said Dan Grandone, the Wisconsin state director with Organizing for America.
Before Obama spoke in Green Bay, Wis., about health care, Laura Klitzka, a 35-year-old mother of two, spoke of battling cancer and dealing with more than $12,000 in medical bills. "Laura's story is incredibly moving. But, sadly, it's not unique," Obama said.
Obama's health care opponents are collecting stories of their own. On its website, a free-market group called Patients United Now has posted testimony from a Canadian woman who was told she had to wait months for a brain tumor operation, and a German woman who protested the tax burden of that country's national health care system.
Amy Menefee, the group's spokeswoman, said Obama is asking volunteers to support broad outlines of a health care plan without knowing details. "The more we give government control of health care, the fewer options we're going to have for ourselves and our families," she said.
Another Organizing for America member, Marcia Riquelme of Madison, Wis., said she would prefer to see Congress consider a health care system totally financed by the government like Medicare, but realizes that probably isn't possible politically. In the meantime, she'll be pushing the Obama approach.
"No one can predict how effective we can be," she said. "We're hoping we can have an impact. How much of an impact we don't know."