Action: Support Education - Tell the Senate not to Sell Out on Health Care Reform

by Clay Burell · 2009-05-10 00:48:00 UTC
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President Obama and Arne Duncan like to compare U.S. education - unfavorably, typically - to that of Korea, where I currently live. Here's an educational comparison they don't share: the number of uninsured people in America is roughly equal to the entire population of Korea, where all 50 million Koreans are covered by national health care.

Maybe, just maybe, health insurance for all is a factor in those dazzling Korean test scores. Maybe the tough love our education "reformers" urge we show toward our underprivileged students should be shown also to our vested health care interests, their lobbying millions be damned.

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One of the unfortunate effects of the departmentalization of knowledge in schools - you know, history is separate from literature, science from math, on and on - is that it conditions us to think "inside the lanes," instead of see the connections across them. Reality is more complex than that.

If you agree, then you'll understand this: One of the best ways you can help improve public education and erase the achievement gap is to push for affordable health care for all.

The Senate Armed Finance Committee certainly isn't pushing for it for us - maybe because its chair, Montana Sen. Max Baucus, has taken more money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies than any other Democrat in Congress, and is excluding single-payer advocates from ongoing health care reform roundtable talks.

Ed Schultz does a great job of reporting on this one. Please watch, then go to this action to petition Baucus to let doctors and the majority of the American public have a seat at the table:

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Do I have to say anything more than that healthy parents and children are likely to learn better than unhealthy ones? And that making health care accessible and affordable to the more than 45.7 million uninsured Americans - and the millions more who are underinsured - will create more healthy parents and children?

Timothy Foley at the Change.org Health Care blog has been doing great coverage on the growing congressional sell-out of our best chance for true health care reform in a decade. I hope you're following it. Bernie Horn of the Campaign for America's Future has more here.

And again, I hope you'll sign Timothy's petition to Baucus. Time's running out.


Clay Burell
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