RetireSafe appeals to president to listen, and to give and take
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- RetireSafe, a seniors' grassroots advocacy organization, is launching a campaign to amass the opinions of older Americans on health care reform in response to President Obama's speech to Congress last week. In a letter today to president Obama, Thair Phillips, president of RetireSafe, says, "I am taking seriously the Presidents 'open door' declaration of willingness to listen to someone with a serious proposal."
Advertisement
Phillips is asking for a meeting with the president's Office of Public Engagement to begin that process. Said Phillips, "I commit to being part of the solution and I feel the first step is to listen to the president and to seniors."
Advertisement
The letter outlines RetireSafe's plans to work together in new ways to shape the future. Not only will the organization gather opinions, but they will report back the information, unedited, to the president, Congress and the public.
Additionally, they will seek to unite and conquer rather than to divide and conquer over health care reform. Phillips said, "Loud rhetoric and hardening positions driven by partisan politics will not get any of us where we need to be." Phillips made a point of identifying unifying principles such as the president's support of tort reform, his commitment to addressing the Medicare Part D coverage gap, and his commitment to establishing true portability of coverage.
Citing the need for seniors to be heard and represented, he said, "There is no other group of Americans who are more respectful than seniors, but they also want to be heard. There are many seniors who voted for you but don't feel they are well represented by other senior organizations. We believe many of them have found a home with us and we are proud of that."
Phillips outlined RetireSafe's goal to gather and report the information in a fair and accurate manner. He said, "RetireSafe is determined to ask fair, meaningful, open ended questions and will accurately and faithfully compile our findings, and follow-up on the answers we receive."
RetireSafe is a grassroots advocacy organization representing over 400,000 older Americans which have signed petitions to Congress, completed surveys, shared their stories and donated money to protect their benefits.
The full text of the letter is available at retiresafe.org.
SOURCE RetireSafe
