TOOLS & RESOURCES | Building a constituency for meaningful health care reform | State-level health care policy campaigns

Fighting for HEALTH CARE FOR ALL

Health care costs are soaring and the system is out of control. Employers are trying to pass these costs on to workers. States are proposing deeper and deeper cuts in public health benefits—cuts which affect more and more of the population, as fewer workers can afford their employers’ plans. More than 41 million Americans have no health insurance; 8 out of 10 uninsured are in working families. This growing healthcare crisis affects workers, working families, and entire communities. We are quickly heading for a collapse of our healthcare system due to rising costs and increasing numbers of people who are uninsured or underinsured.

As states throughout the country contemplate ever-deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, one in three Americans now rely on a government health plan. A recent news report stated that many working families “choose” Medicaid over employer-provided insurance—but we know that there’s little “choice” involved, as employers shift more and more of the skyrocketing costs of health care onto employees, who simply can’t afford not to turn to Medicaid. Over half of Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million employees do not have health care coverage; corporations in all sectors of the economy are slashing employee and retiree health care coverage.

The widespread failure of the private sector to provide essential services for working families means that the time is increasingly ripe for a national health care reform movement. We have a real opportunity to “connect the dots” between different campaigns within our network in order to draw a compelling picture of the health care crisis we face and the need for meaningful reform for health care for all.

More than 25 local JwJ coalitions are now actively engaged in health care justice campaigns: supporting bargaining fights in which health care is a key issue; developing community campaigns to support health care worker organizing; opposing hospital mergers and closings; organizing municipal and statewide efforts to make prescription drugs affordable; opposing Medicare and Medicaid cuts; and working to reform HMO’s. While we stress the need for concrete victories that make a real difference in working families’ access to affordable quality healthcare, we recognize we cannot win comprehensive healthcare workplace by workplace and therefore we need a broader campaign to win Healthcare For All. JwJ local coalitions are linking on-going work with broader healthcare demands that have potential for meaningful healthcare reform.