A Day for Calls: Hodes Health Care Town Hall TONIGHT

by: Zandra Rice Hawkins

Tue Jul 28, 2009 at 18:47:32 PM EDT

All day long, the New Hampshire arm of Health Care for America Now (HCAN) - the nation's largest health care campaign - has been generating calls to Hodes and Shea Porter to encourage them to vote for H.R. 3200 before they leave for August recess at the end of the week.

Of course, our representatives can't make that call themselves, but that's one of the reasons why some New Hampshire activists are helping generate phone calls into Blue Dog districts. HCAN anticipates to generate more than 50,000 contacts to the US House of Representatives today alone.

The message is simple: there is strong support for H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act and it's time to move forward. (And my personal note: anti-health care obstructionists will be ... obstructionists. Let's get this bill to the floor, now.)

In case you forgot, H.R. 3200 will:

• use a sliding scale to determine your insurance cost
• provide tax credits for employees with under 25 employees
• use a graduated surcharge on high-income taxpayers that would raise $543 billion over ten years. (Good info: NH Citizens Alliance for Action and SEIU's Change That Works just released a report (scroll to NH) that finds only 1.3% of NH taxpayers will be affected by the proposed surcharge, with low and middle-income taxpayers not affected at all.)

If you haven't made a call, consider yourself asked.

Here's the other interesting information, and why you're probably reading this post - Hodes is hosting a Health Care Town Hall teleconference tonight. For those interested, see release:

Reminder: Congressman Paul Hodes to Hold Telephone Town Hall on Health Care Reform for New Hampshire's 2nd District

Washington, DC--- Congressman Paul Hodes will hold a telephone town hall tonight at 7:40 p.m. for residents of New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District. The town hall will last an hour and will focus on health care reform.

When: Today, July 28, 2009; 7:40 PM

How: 877-229-8493; 14631#

Hodes is a good health care advocate, and I'll be interested to hear what he has to say about the current status of the bill.