National Reform Updates – Tsongas in Hudson, Obama in NH, and More

As the national health reform debate heats up, there are lots of ways for Bay Staters to show their support for expanding quality affordable health care.

• Congresswoman Tsongas Event Tuesday: Congresswoman Niki Tsongas will host her Congress on Your Corner program in Hudson on Tuesday, August 11 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Hudson High School located at 69 Brigham Street in Hudson. Her meeting on Saturday was a mix of good discussion and anger (see our report here). Click here for some talking points on health reform.
• President Obama in Portsmouth Tuesday: President Obama will be holding a health care town hall at 1:00 pm at the the Portsmouth, NH High School gymnasium. Tickets to attrend were allocated over the weekend by the on-line process, but protesters from all sides are expected outside.
• White House Reality Check Web Site: The White House unveiled a new web site today to respond to all the false rumors and fears about health reform, at www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck. The site has built-in tools allowing you to e-mail every page and video to others and is linked to social networks. There’s also an FAQ one can email that is in the same format as the chain e-mails going around.
• Massachusetts Health Reform as Template: We in Massachusetts can let others outside know about the success of health reform here, and the next steps we’re taking. Two good resources are yesterday’s lead editorial in the NY Times, which echoes the Globe editorial from last week. Here’s an excerpt:
  

  Massachusetts’s experiment in near universal health care coverage has become a favorite whipping boy for opponents of health care reform. They claim the program is a fiscal disaster and that the whole country will be plunged into a similar disaster if President Obama and Congress’s Democratic leaders have their way.

  That is an egregious misreading of what is happening in Massachusetts. The state’s experience so far suggests that it is more than possible to insure almost all citizens and stay within planned budgets — although it will take great creativity and political will to hold down rising costs so that the program is sustainable.

  Three years after the program began, 97 percent of Massachusetts residents have health insurance — by far the highest rate in the nation. That has been achieved without huge increases in state spending.

  Also helpful in summarizing the state of health reform, and the next steps on payment reform, is this blog post on the New Health Dialogue from the New America Foundation, that somehow has to fit in David Ortiz, too

UPDATE: This blog post from the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has good perspective on the cover people/payment reform issues here, too.
-Brian Rosman