The online progressive hub Daily Kos has gone AFSCME green for health care.

If you’ve visited Daily Kos today, you probably noticed the familiar orange color has been updated with a healthy dose of AFSCME green. We’ve taken out a full-page “skin” ad to make sure people call Congress today in support of the health insurance reform bill.

We think the colors work well together, and so do the combined efforts of labor and the netroots community. With a vote on H.R. 3962 coming as soon as Saturday, it really is all hands on deck to make sure this crucial legislation is passed now.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act provides a strong public option, protects working Americans from a tax on their health benefits, and requires large employers to provide insurance for their employees. It deserves the support of every member of Congress — including yours.

So go ahead and check out the new look at Daily Kos, and then make sure you call and tell your Representative to vote YES on the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Let’s make it happen now!

This message comes from Chuck Loveless, AFSCME Director of Legislation.

It all comes down to this.

The House of Representatives finally will vote on health care reform legislation as soon as Saturday. This is a truly historic and defining moment for our nation. Will we meet one of the most important challenges of our generation? With your help — yes we will.

Tell your representative to vote YES for the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Click here now.

You can help us cross the finish line. This is the vote that can put an end to our broken health care system — one that currently allows insurance companies to deny care for pre-existing conditions, has our premiums going through the roof, leaves 47 million Americans uninsured and drags our entire economy down.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee recorded a special video message for our members whose actions have helped us come this far.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962) represents the real reform that we’ve been fighting for:

• H.R. 3962 pays for reform the right way — by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share and not taxing our health benefits.
• The Affordable Health Care for America Act includes the choice of a public health insurance option, providing competition for private insurance companies to lower costs and improve quality.
• The bill also requires most employers to provide insurance coverage for their workers or pay a meaningful amount into a fund to help low- and moderate-income workers buy their own coverage through the exchange that will be established in every state.

You can bet that Congress is hearing from insurance company lobbyists — that’s why it’s so critical that they hear from you, too.

Your voice will serve as a stark reminder that there is overwhelming public support for real reform — but only if you make the call. So please, go to: www.afscme.org/call

And help us spread the word on Facebook and Twitter.

Yesterday we wrote about a critical vote in the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee which pitted regular people and our pensions against the Chamber of Commerce and The Business Roundtable. AFSCME has been playing a leadership role in that effort, and thanks to all our hard work we won the vote this morning 39-30.

This is a big step forward in ensuring accountability for corporate directors through creating real democratic elections. The next step in the process is to have proxy access included in the Senate Financial reform legislation.

The current economic meltdown has destroyed $11 trillion in family wealth, pushed unemployment above 10 percent and threatened millions with home foreclosure. Part of the solution is to hold corporate directors accountable for the risky decisions they make and the executive pay schemes they approve that promote greed.

Proxy access gives shareholders the power to replace these corporate directors, and this week the House Financial Services Committee will be voting on a proxy access amendment sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Gary C. Peters (D-MI). The Chamber of Commerce is aggressively mobilizing to defeat this amendment and protect corporate insiders.

Visit ShareOwners.org for more information and to take action to hold corporate directors accountable and help prevent another financial crisis.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee issued the following statement regarding the introduction of the Affordable Health Care for America Act:

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House leadership have crafted a strong bill. It deserves the support of every member of the Congress. It protects working Americans from a tax on their health benefits, provides a public option and requires large and medium-sized employers to provide insurance for their employees. This bill will make quality, affordable health care a reality for millions of families. Instead of taxing the health benefits of middle class Americans, Speaker Pelosi asks the wealthiest people in the country to pay their fair share. We will mobilize our members across the country to build support for this bill. This is real health care reform. The time has come for Congress to enact it.”

The Senate health care legislation announced by Sen. Harry Reid on Monday will include a public option, but would pay for reform by taxing more costly, so-called “Cadillac” plans. Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson says the proposed excise tax is going to hit an awful lot of Chevy plans, too: the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation says the tax will hit one-third of Americans by 2019.

Supporters of the Senate plan say employers will buy less-expensive plans to avoid having to pay the excise tax, meaning employees will need to pay more health care costs themselves — but that’s okay since the money being saved on the cheaper plans will be passed on in higher wages.

Meyerson sees a different outcome:

[I]f employers opt for cheaper policies to avoid the excise taxes on more-expensive plans, their savings may not be passed on to workers as higher wages but simply kept by the employers. Out-of-pocket health costs for workers would rise, but into-pocket wage increases to cover those costs might not be forthcoming.

Read the full column at washingtonpost.com.

Earlier this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) held a press conference to announce that the merged Senate health reform bill will include a public option which would allow individual states to opt out.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee praised Sen. Reid’s efforts:

“I want to commend Senator Reid and other members of the Senate leadership who have worked so hard to produce this bill, which takes us closer to the goal of health care reform. While the bill is by no means perfect, it is a significant improvement over the proposal crafted in the Senate Finance Committee. Now we will work to improve the bill on the Senate floor and to pass a strong bill in the House. AFSCME continues to support health care reform that includes a robust public option and an effective employer mandate, while eliminating taxes on middle class health plans. The American people are ready for Congress to finish this bill and make quality, affordable health care a reality for all Americans.”

Watch some of the highlights from Sen. Reid’s announcement here, courtesy of Think Progress: Wonk Room:

Yesterday afternoon, AFSCME joined more than 500 union members and health care activists at a rally in Washington, DC, where giant health insurance lobby group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) was holding a conference just around the corner from our DC headquarters.

Led by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), we demanded the insurance industry’s top lobbyist, Karen Ignagni, meet with seven families whose lives have been turned upside down by insurance company bad practices and who traveled thousands of miles to be in DC. Ignagni never showed.

Listen to their stories:

Read more at the HCAN blog and the AFL-CIO blog, and check out some great photos from AMERICAblog:

From Health Care for America Now (HCAN):

The veil has finally come off the insurance companies’ charade as one of the insurance industry’s top lobbyists, Steve Champlin (who also works for AHIP, the insurance industry’s front group and lobbying arm), told Republican Members of Congress not to vote for health reform under any circumstances:

“There is absolutely no interest, no reason Republicans should ever vote for this thing. They have gone from a party that got killed 11 months ago to a party that is rising today. And they are rising up on the turmoil of health care,” said Champlin. “So when they vote for a health care reform bill, whatever it is, they are giving comfort to the enemy who is down.”

“Long before the Republicans discovered that the House bill was a strategy to kill seniors and all that kind of stuff the plan was already unpopular,” he added, underscoring why Republicans shouldn’t attach themselves to the legislation.

The remarks came during the opening session of AHIP’s annual State Issues Conference in which both Champlin and his co-panelist seemed to concede that reform would pass and will include a variation of a public option for insurance coverage.

The industry that treats rape as a pre-existing condition is finally coming clean. Their message: Republicans should kill health care reform, otherwise they will be giving comfort to the “enemy.”

So the insurance companies are finally coming clean that they’re against health reform and that they’ve always been against health reform. It’s slightly more honest of them.

Read more at HCAN’s NOW! blog.

And check out this interview from ThinkProgress with Wendell Potter, a former VP of communications at health insurance giant CIGNA, about exactly how insurance companies derail reform and preserve the status quo. Working in public relations for CIGNA, Potter had a direct role in multiple campaigns in the past to minimize public outrage at insurance company abuses and defeat legislation aimed at regulating insurers.

A new ad from MoveOn.org shows actress Heather Graham as the public option, forcing “lazy, bloated” private insurance companies to get back in the race and compete.

“Insurance companies have gotten lazy, bloated from the profits of raising our health care costs sky high while the health care crisis keeps getting worse. A public health insurance option is the key to quality affordable care for Americans. And over 70 percent of Americans want the public option. Some in Washington say this is unfair competition. But competition is as American as apple pie.”

Read more on HuffingtonPost.com.