Today Hope Street Group launched the beta version of its online platform, Policy 2.0, at HopeStreetGroup.org. This online platform brings new talent and tools to traditionally partisan debates by enabling reform-minded professionals, policymakers, and practitioners across the nation to collaborate on policy ideas and realize them in partnership with decision-makers.

We know this model works.  Over the past three months, several dozen volunteer teachers and other professionals have collaborated through the Policy 2.0 site to design recommendations for a set of Essential Elements for Teacher Evaluation Systems and are presenting their recommendations at the National Press Club today.

We are looking for bright individuals interested in education and/or health reform to contribute to Policy 2.0. Help be part of the solution to improve these systems in your country, state, and local community by:

• Sharing your unique experiences and perspective on these issues by contributing to online discussions and participating in polls
• Helping us build a library of evidence by writing a blog post or starting a  discussion.
• Networking with likeminded professionals.

A novel nonprofit called Hope Street Group is behind the effort to involve educators in the debate. Created in 2003 as a volunteer-only experiment, Hope Street Group now has a full-time staff that works to build “coalitions of the reasonable” around domestic policy questions by gathering diverse groups of people to solve them together.

In a process officials at Hope Street Group call Policy 2.0, business executives and policy experts join with doctors or nurses or — in this case — teachers via small working groups, and then come up with a policy recommendation that everyone can agree on.

The team of 28 people who have signed up to write guidelines for a teacher evaluation system includes administrators, teachers, and policy experts, and they come from all around the country, Hope Street officials said. “This is a chance for an authentic and neutral voice,” said Catherine Cullen, a staffer who will work with the teacher-evaluation group.

"The AMA is not as powerful as it was in the mid 20th Century,"  when it was arguably the organization most responsible for blocking efforts at national health insurance," writes Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic  "Nor does the medical community speak with the same unified, conservative voice it once did. Different types of physicians hold different views and speak through different organizations. Primary care physicians in partiuclar--organized through groups like American Academy of Family Phyisicians and the American Pediatrics Association--are generally more liberal and may well speak out in favor of the public plan, if they haven't already."

If health care legislation is approved, it will be an interesting indicator of which group(s) are the new 800 lb. gorillas in DC...

“As Mayor of San Francisco, the first city to offer universal access for the uninsured, I know that America’s cities can provide compassionate and innovative health care to their residents,” said Mayor Newsom. San Francisco is attempting to offer universal health care through its controversial Healthy San Francisco program, which has won plaudits from some health reform advocates while antagonizing many small businesses in San Francisco.

Read more.

"It is clear to me that there is real movement in the Senate on the issue of taxation of health benefits. I can see key Senators on both sides of the aisle agreeing to it as a means to help pay for reform. Likely, it would take the form of taxing everyone’s benefits above a certain threshold or taxing all health benefits for higher income people.

Read the whole post here.

Check out this new video, screened for the first time at the 2009 Opportunity Economics Colloquium, April 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C.

Hope Street Group's Monique Nadeau submitted the following letter to the editor of the New York Times in response to an April 9 op-ed:

To the Editor:

    Forget universal health care coverage? Then you can forget the American Dream, too.

    Ramesh Ponnuru, in his April 9 op-ed ("The Misguided Quest for Universal Coverage"), is wrong to oppose the goal of universal access to health care coverage.

    While Mr. Ponnuru takes on the "practical, moral and political" cases for universal coverage, he ignores the most compelling case of all – the economic case. Hope Street Group, the non-partisan policy organization that I lead, has developed an Economic Opportunity Index (EOI) to show that the economic future of our people and our country depends on all of our citizens having access to health care coverage. The EOI demonstrates that health accounts for almost 25% of the total variation in economic opportunity.

    The author seems to imply that the only debate is about providing universal health care, unnecessarily raising costs. The fact is that controlling costs and improving quality are just as important, and are an integral part of all serious health reform discussions taking place in DC.

    To deny universal coverage -- and to ignore this opportunity to drastically remake the system -- is to deny millions of Americans the opportunity to lead healthy, productive lives and diminishes our country’s chance to regain its global competitiveness and widespread prosperity.

    Monique Nadeau
    Executive Director
    Hope Street Group