Minutes 6/18/09

Present:  Kenny Jones, Chris Lindberg (by telephone), Dwight McCabe, Don Mitchell, Craig Salins, Joshua Welter

 

Taking our direction from the work of the single payer summit on 6/17, our committee developed the following goals.

The Overarching Goal:  Increase the Political Feasibility of Single Payer           

Our Policy Goal: Infuse Single Payer Principles into Any Health Care Reform Legislation.

With these guiding goals, secondary goals should be developed by the committees responsible for each of major function. Goals should be specific, measurable, and attainable in the timeframe of the plan. The summit decided to focus right now on the near term while Congress is actively working on health care reform legislation this summer.

1. Policy -  Infuse single payer principles into any health care reform legislation

Sub-goals might include successfully including specific principles in legislation, hearings, votes in committee, votes on the floor of each house, passing legislation.

This committee would also be responsible for tracking legislative proposals closely and alerting other committees when action is needed to influence the debate.

2. Grassroots Capacity - Increasing the number of supporters in our coalition, especially those we can mobilize. 

Subgoals could include activities like creating forums to educate people, increasing the number of mobilizable supporters, numbers of supporters by congressional or legislative district, recruiting district leaders and teams.

3. Coalition Building - Increasing the number of single payer supporting organizations in our coalition and effectively integrating them into our activities.

4. Messaging & Media - Developing effective messages and getting them out to our supporters.

Subgoals could include getting the research on messaging language for health care reform, deciding the type of messages to advance to reach main street voters, creating a unifying core message and specific messages for various needs (ie. to counter an attack or a threat to weaken a reform proposal). They would also include activities to get the message out like email, press briefings and press releases.

5. Lawmaker Relationships -  Building relationships with decision makers and staff.

In particular we should enhance the relationships that we have with the staffs of specific lawmakers including Sen. Murray, Reps. Dicks,  McDermott, Inslee and Smith.

Sub goals could include meetings with the ‘gatekeeper’ staffer, with the health care policy staffer, with the Legislative Director, with the Chief of Staff, and with the elected official themselves. Other goals could include getting staff to use our language, like “single payer principles must be in any reform”.

We agreed that in the discussions currently occurring in Congress there is not a specific choice between single payer and public plan option and need to meet Congress where the debate is, not where we want it to be. We should avoid the trap of pitting one against the other. In meetings with members of Congress staff, we should continue to advocate a positive message of infusing "single-payer principles" into any public option. 

We also agreed that within our coalition we should avoid the creation of a split between those who favor only single payer and those who can support an appropriate public option plan.

One topic to consider in the future is what stance to take if legislation includes a cooperative or the provision that a public plan option would occur only if there is a "trigger" situation.

We can consider "agitational" activities directed toward those legislators who are not supportive of single payer principles and are unlikely to ever be supportive. These activities would harness the energy and emotion of our supporters but need to be constructive and in sync with our overall strategy, and not inadvertently destructive of our efforts to build alliances.

All our measurements need to be realistic and candid assessments of our actual resources and results, not optimistic assessments, or we will not have a clear idea of our progress and our challenges.

For the Future

Strategic Planning Session in the Fall

We recommend that there be a strategic planning session in the fall, once the results of the health care reform efforts in Congress are clear.