As Congress stands ready to cast a historic vote on health care reform, AFSCME and a coalition of pro-reform groups have launched a series of television ads as part of a final push for passage of the legislation.

AFSCME and Americans United for Change have produced an ad spotlighting sickening premium hikes on individuals and small businesses — as high as 75 percent — as a closing argument for why Congress should stand with their constituents and not the greedy insurance companies making record profits.

Read the press release for more information and watch the ad here:

Ads from Health Care for America NOW! (HCAN) along with the AFSCME, Catholics United, and SEIU were released today urging Members of Congress to listen to us, not the insurance companies, and vote to pass comprehensive health care reform now. The ads are scheduled to run Tuesday through Friday to coincide with the upcoming vote.

Below is an example of the ad running in the NY-20 district of Rep. Scott Murphy:

See the rest of the ads on the AFSCME.org website.

This entry by AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee is cross-posted from Huffington Post and Firedoglake.

This is the week we’ve been waiting for.

This is the week when Democrats in Congress can prove that it is still possible for our political institutions to stand with the American people in a time of crisis.

This is the week when we will tell who is looking out for political cover and who is standing with patients, families and doctors who need health care reform.

Let’s be clear about what is at stake when the House votes on health care reform. How you answer these six questions will answer how you stand on health care reform:

1. Should insurance companies be able to deny patients coverage if they have a preexisting condition? This bill will end the ability of insurance companies to abuse Americans who have pre-existing conditions.
2. Should insurance companies be able to end your insurance coverage when you get sick? This bill will end their ability to do that.
3. Should insurance companies be able to double premiums and deductibles whenever they want with no controls on their actions? This bill will regulate the insurance companies and allow the government to prevent massive hikes in premiums and deductibles that individuals and business have to pay.
4. Should insurance companies have to pay for preventive care? This bill will require it.
5. Should parents be able to keep their unemployed children on their policies until the young adult turns 26? That’s in the bill.
6. Should taxpayers be paying more than $500,000 in subsidies to the insurance companies? Those sweetheart deals end when President Obama signs health care reform.

Health care reform will lay the groundwork for covering an additional 31 million uninsured Americans. A family of three earning $37,000 a year would pay less than $200 per month for good health insurance for the entire family. The family’s out-of-pocket costs would be limited too, so even if someone in the family faced a serious illness, they would not have to pay more than $4,000 in out-of-pocket expenses.

Don’t believe the corporate flacks and Republican talking heads who tell you this is a complicated issue. There is nothing complicated about it. The only people on Capitol Hill who are confused about health care reform are the people in the pockets of insurance company executives. The folks you see on cable TV, who say we need to start over and spend another year — or another decade — before we pass the reform Americans need, are folks who are reading talking points written by insurance company lobbyists and Republican party pollsters. They say that the public opposes reform, but what the public really opposes are the Republican attempts to water down reform and keep the insurance companies happy.

Now, the top Republicans in Congress are spreading the lie that President Obama’s reforms will hurt Medicare recipients. They are making this up, just as they made up the charges about socialized medicine, government control of health care and death panels. These frauds — and that’s what these politicians are — claim that Medicare will be threatened by President Obama’s reforms. These are the same characters who have tried for years to cut Medicare funding and privatize Social Security. Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor can run from their records, but they can’t hide. Seniors are not going to buy their new found love of Medicare.

These are the same people claiming we can’t afford health care reform. They ignore the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, which concluded that health care reform actually cuts the federal deficit. That’s because President Obama is cutting the waste and fraud that Republicans and the insurance companies allowed to spread in the health care system. He’s asking wealthy Americans to pay a bit more so that Medicare will be more solvent and the federal government’s health care costs will decline in the years ahead. Seniors will be happy to know that these reforms will end the donut hole they face on their prescription drug benefit, so they won’t have to worry about losing their savings to prescription bills.

If you care about regulating the insurance companies, cutting the deficit, strengthening Medicare and helping working families, you need to take action today. Call your member of Congress and tell them to support health care reform. You can call your U.S. representative now toll free at 888-460-0813. Tell them the time has come to stand up to the insurance companies. The time has come to pass health care reform.

AFSCME members are doing their part. We will make tens of thousands of calls and write letters. We will spend $1 million on television ads this week to let members of Congress know that working families will not let the insurance industry and their front groups dominate the television airways as this historic opportunity to end insurance company abuses comes to a vote.

Don’t be fooled by the insurance companies, the Chamber of Commerce and the GOP operatives. If we fail to defeat the insurance companies, Americans will look back at this week as the one when we lost the best chance in generations to pass a bill to help working families deal with health care. Call your representative and tell them to support health care reform. It’s time to rein in the abuses. It’s time to control skyrocketing costs. It’s time for an up-or-down Congressional vote . It’s time to tell the insurance companies: Your time is up.

On March 9th, hundreds of AFSCME members joined thousands of union members and health care advocates brought together by Health Care for America NOW! to perform a citizens’ arrest of health insurance executives as they were meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC to plan their continued efforts to defeat health care reform.

Watch this video to see our message to the insurance companies: your days of denying care, dropping patients when they get sick and jacking up health care costs are over. We need reform, we need it now, and we won’t let their lobbyists or their money stop Congress from passing it.

AFSCME members at the March 9th “mass citizens’ arrest” of health insurance executives. (Photo by D.W. Matthews Studios, LLC)

Thousands of demonstrators, including hundreds of AFSCME members, participated in a “mass citizens’ arrest” of health insurance executives as they met in our nation’s capital on Tuesday to plan their continued efforts to defeat health care reform.

AFSCME activists from Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania joined the protest in front of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, D.C. where the health insurance lobbying group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), was holding its annual policy conference.

“We’re doing something that we should have done a while ago,” AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee told the Los Angeles Times. “Whatever it takes, we’ll do.”

Speaking to the Huffington Post, McEntee let our elected representatives know they are on notice:

“I hope this sends a message to Congress. I think we have to demonstrate that we are not going to stand aside, that we are going to take them out if they don’t help us at all.”

George Estright, a member of AFSCME Local 2162, told the AFL-CIO Now Blog why he traveled from Harrisburg, PA, for the rally:

“We support health care reform to control insurance company profits. It’s not right for working Americans to pay for 200 percent profits for insurance companies. We need something that is fair and equitable.”

Press coverage included stories in McClatchy Newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, MedPage Today, the Baltimore Sun, Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

See photos from the event on Flickr:

Read more about the March 9th action in this AFSCME WORKS Online Xtra and in posts on the AFL-CIO Now and Health Care for America NOW! blogs.

This ad in today’s issues of Politico, Roll Call and The Hill, urges Congress to pass President Obama’s health care reform plan now.

As the leaders of America’s health insurance industry meet today at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC, thousands of working men and women are urging Congress to take a stand against the insurance companies and their efforts to kill health care reform.

Busloads of AFSCME activists from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland have come to the nation’s capitol to confront insurance company executives who drop coverage for sick people and jack up rates to create unconscionable profits.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee, joining more than 3,000 protesters outside the hotel where insurance company CEO’s and lobbyists are attending their annual policy conference, urged Congress to stand up to the insurance companies.

“For them, the bottom line is making money,” McEntee said. “They are paid millions to fight something every American should have – quality, affordable health care.”

AFSCME took out full-page ads in the three key Capitol Hill newspapers – Politico, Roll Call and The Hill – today urging Congress to pass President Obama’s health care reform plan now.

Via the Rachel Maddow Show blog comes this graph from Econbrowser:

From Maddow:

Consider three bills — two of them passed under budget reconciliation, the third heading for budget reconciliation. Each had an effect on the fiscal health of the nation, calculated by the Congressional Budget Office. The first two, the tax cuts pushed by President George W. Bush, blew a hole in the budget. The third, the Senate’s health reform bill? As you can see from the CBO projections, that’s a different story.

From our friends at Americans United for Change:

This morning, in yet another slap to the face of struggling,
out-of-work Americans, miserly GOP Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky again roadblocked measures in the Senate to extend unemployment benefits to 400,000 Americans and subsidies for affordable health care for thousands more. 

Senator Bunning’s “tough s—t” message to millions of struggling Americans, including 119,230 in Kentucky, was enthusiastically approved by Republican leaders.

It’s a sad new low for a party that believes they can gain politically keeping Washington in gridlock – drawing a line in the sand on virtually every issue, no matter how uncontroversial from creating jobs to financial regulatory reform to funding for our troops to health insurance reform and now unemployment and health care assistance for their constituents who need it most.

FYI – check out this new web video below on what the Lexington Herald-Leader calls Senator Bunning’s “callous grandstanding,”:

Not satisfied with record-breaking profits of $12.5 billion last year – a whooping 56 percent spike from 2008 – the nation’s five largest insurance companies have the audacity to raise their premiums on thousands of families who are still struggling in these tough economic times. One California insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, has threatened to increase premiums by up to 39 percent this year. It made an enormous profit of $4.7 billion in 2009.

As U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein puts it, these insurers “have gotten very greedy.”

She’s right. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), these companies raked in profits of 250 percent between 2000 and 2009. Now they want even larger premium hikes: 56 percent in Michigan, 24 percent in Connecticut, 23 percent in Maine, 20 percent in Oregon, and 16 percent in Rhode island.

These are “disturbing examples of the problems that make reforming our health insurance system more important than ever,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius points out. “Thousands of struggling families are left with an unpleasant choice between fewer benefits, higher insurance rates, or having no insurance at all.”

It’s time to pass real health care reform and stop health insurance premiums from soaring even higher.

This message regarding President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address comes from AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee.

President Obama made it clear last night that he will fight for jobs. He knows that we cannot lose sight of the millions of working families who are still suffering from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Too many Americans are out of work and too many jobs are at risk.

The President and Congress must act now or millions of Americans could lose their jobs in the months ahead. To this point, the President reminded the Democrats of their obligation to lead and served notice to Republicans that ‘just say no’ is not an option.

AFSCME agrees with the President that America needs to lay a foundation for long-term economic growth, and we continue to believe that providing affordable, quality health care for millions of additional Americans is not only the right thing to do, but is also a key to economic recovery.

We also agree that federal action is needed to keep our economy from slipping back into the ditch. Too many services in communities across the country are being cut to the bone. AFSCME members understand this first hand. Members like you are on the front lines of this crisis, trying to do more and more with less and less. State and local governments need help and they need it now.

AFSCME will fight for robust investment in vital public services. Indeed, investment in public services must be a part of federal jobs legislation. In the coming weeks and months, we will call you, our 1.6 million members, to lend your voice to our efforts to make this happen.

With Congress on the verge of passing historic health care reform, opponents are apparently willing to do just about anything to stop our efforts to fix the health care crisis, drive costs down and cover all Americans.

Among our key priorities, AFSCME is fighting to maintain important consumer protections in health care reform, and to rein in the abusive practices of the industry. The insurance industry has fought to undermine any new proposed regulations, even those they have publicly agreed to. Unfortunately, much of their lobbying is hidden and grossly underreported.

Now an explosive expose by the National Journal reports that the insurance industry secretly spent as much as $20 million on recent ads attacking health care reform, scaring the public and spreading misinformation. Big insurance companies, including Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint, funneled millions through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and front groups to hide their contributions and negative campaign while they acted like they were willing to make a deal.

The industry’s covert tactics to protect their bottom line demonstrate why we need strong market reforms, such as ensuring access to a national health insurance buying pool with strong federal oversight, and stopping insurers from finding new and creative ways to deny care based on pre-existing conditions and other factors.

The health care crisis is dragging down our economy and making Americans sick, yet all the insurance industry cares about is their profits.