Health Care Reform - The Most Important Public Policy Battle of 2009

Now that soon-to-be-ex Gov. Sarah Palin is out of the way, it is time to spend a lot more space and electrons here on more important battles.

Other main issues Progressive Alaska and southcentral Alaska blogs have devoted space to since late May, have been:

1. The ongoing civil rights battle in Anchorage

2. The battle to save the Yukon-Kuskokwim ecosystems' and their attendant multi-thousand year cultures from extinction from human predators.

3. Relief efforts to help victims of the 2009 ice jam flooding along parts of the Yukon.

Our national legislators, Rep. Don Young, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Sen. Mark Begich and their activities have been somewhat neglected. Probable 2010 candidates for many offices, and their positions on important issues aren't being covered as much as they might be.

President Obama's goal of getting a health care reform bill out of Congress before their August recess is one of the few things he's now doing I fully support. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes bickering in the White House itself, as Obama seemingly has to fight his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, for control of the President's own narrative.

We need to put pressure on all three of our legislators in DC over the next two weeks, to get them to explain more fully their stances on the legislation as it gels. Rep. Young, who has been more valuable to Alaskans in the minority than he was when in power (we can thank Diane Benson and Ethan Berkowitz and the people who voted for them for waking Don up), will probably go with the GOP to slow the process down. The Senate sort of takes up what the House hands them, so we need to write to Young first.

Then we need to swamp Murkowski and Begich with the kind of constituent feedback that makes them forget what the last lobbyist told them.

Here's a YouTube of an exchange on MSNBC today on health care reform: