Liberals ramp up healthcare pressure on centrists
By Alexander Bolton
Posted: 04/08/09 11:35 PM
A coalition of liberal groups are waging a broad national campaign to build pressure on conservative Democrats and centrist Republicans who may not support President Obama’s vision for healthcare reform.
The coalition, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which includes groups such as ACORN, the AFL-CIO, Campaign for America’s Future and MoveOn.org, has not begun to target individual lawmakers but they are making a loud call for a potentially controversial element of Obama’s reform plan.
Specifically, liberal groups are waging a national grassroots campaign this week to demand that all Americans be given access to government-run public health insurance plans. They are also demanding lawmakers support a procedural tactic that would allow Senate passage of healthcare reform without any Republican votes.
Several of the groups in the coalition targeted conservative Democrats such as Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana for opposing the use of the procedure, known as budget reconciliation, to protect Obama’s agenda from GOP filibusters.
Organizers believe their efforts will pressure centrist Democrats and Republicans to line up behind Obama’s healthcare proposal, which calls for all Americans to have the choice of a public insurance plan.
“There are a lot of different organizations and a lot of folks at the grassroots level who will be pushing very hard for the public insurance option,” said Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who helped put the coalition together and serves as a consultant to it.
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http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/liberals-ramp-up-healthcare-pressure-on-centrists-2009-04-08.html
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