Gameplan for Wednesday

Ok, here's the gameplan for Wednesday...

For those of you that can make it before Wednesday, make appointments with your elected officials and other Delegates - type up letters telling them your story about your child (or children), your problems with insurance coverage, and give them a picture of your child. Though I haven't heard anything official, based on previous conversations we should have some TV, newspaper, and radio coverage leading into the Wednesday committee meeting. When I get the details, I will let you know which newspapers, TV stations and radio stations...

On Wednesday, we will meet on the 2nd Floor of the Rotunda in the capital at 9 AM. I also expect some media coverage to be there that day... I would recommend making some signs with your child's picture on it that have some friendly message like "Please support HB 4091" - as an example. If you make a sign, please do not be oppositional or aggressive - that is not the message we are attempting to send and we have way too much momentum to do that. Before the meeting starts, we will all go to the meeting room of the B&I committee and be in the hallway when the B&I committee members go into their meeting room showing our support of the bill. Some of us will go into the committee meeting, and for those of you that don't - I suggest meeting with your elected officials (if you haven't done so at this point) and ask them to support the bill when it hits either the Finance committee and/or the House floor. Once the committee meeting is done (likely a little before 11 AM), we will meet again at the Rotunda and give everyone the update of what occurred in the meeting.

At this point in time (barring anything unforeseen), we fully expect for this bill to successfully make it out of this committee and it will then go to the Finance Committee. So, with that said, I recommend a letter for Finance Chairman, Delegate White (D - Mingo), with the same message as before (your story, problems with coverage, and include a picture) and also urge him to have this go to his committee immediately, which should be on Monday, February 18th (Finance committee has been meeting on Monday's) and would be this committee's first meeting after B&I would (in theory) moves HB 4091 along.

With a big turnout on this Wednesday and the media coverage that we are expecting leading into this Wednesday, this should be enough pressure on the House AND the Senate to expedite their efforts and get HB 4091 moving through this process for full Legislative passage.

If anyone has any questions about Wednesday, please contact me as soon as possible... Thanks, and I hope to see you all at the capitol on Wednesday - but don't forget to check back in here for informational updates as I find them out...