Today, July 8, in Washington and about 50 cities around the country, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Erie, a new movement for health care reform will be born, Health Care for America Now! (HCAN).<\/p>\n
The Philadelphia HCAN kickoff will be held at 1 pm in the Caucus Room (Room 401), at City Hall. Confirmed speakers include<\/p>\n
\u2022\tLiz McElroy, political director, AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.
\n\u2022\tRandy Barge a Presbyterian minister and board member of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project.
\n\u2022\tCarolyn Banks, a member of Acorn who has had issues related to access to health care.
\n\u2022\tDavid Grande, MD, of National Physician\u2019s Alliance<\/p>\n
We have invited the members of City Council, and Philadelphia State house and Senate members.<\/p>\n
HCAN is being created by a large number of organizations nationally and in Pennsylvania. It is co-chaired nationally by SEIU and AFSCME and our Pennsylvania organization is being brought together by SEIU, the AFL-CIO, the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, Acorn, and Penn Action. A list of all the members of HCAN can be found our website http:\/\/healthcareforamericanow.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n The goal of HCAN is to create a nationwide movement to win the implementation of health care reform that conforms to our principles, expressed in our Statement of Common Purpose, which can also be found on our website http:\/\/healthcareforamericanow.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n Those principles can be summarized fairly simply. We are calling for a bold, new American solution to health care; one that is nationwide in scope. We want to guarantee quality affordable health care for all. And we want to offer all Americans a real choice of health insurance plans. If our goals are realized everyone will be able to keep the private insurance plan they have now. Everyone will be able to choose a new private insurance plan. And everyone will be able to join a publish health insurance plan.<\/p>\n All of these plans will guarantee of standard, comprehensive benefits that meets our needs. And all will provide quality insurance affordable to everyone. Everyone will have to pay something for their health insurance; but those payments will be on a sliding scale according to what people earn.<\/p>\n In the private insurance market, government will set and enforces rules so that health care comes before profits. Insurance companies will make money by insuring more people and keeping them healthy not by denying coverage and care to people.<\/p>\n What HCAN\u2019s principles do rule out is the kind of health care \u201creform\u201d being put forward by insurance companies and their defenders. We are asking all Americans\u2014both voters and politicians\u2014to choose between our vision of health care reform, and the vision of the insurance companies, one in which those of us who can afford it have insurance with high deductibles up to $10,000; in which that insurance is subsidized with tax credits that are worth little to those with low incomes; and in which employer based insurance is taxed.<\/p>\n We believe that, when offered this choice in this election, Americans will choose to support our vision of health care reform.<\/p>\n So we hope to build a national movement at all levels of our democracy, one that will give a powerful voice to the growing demand for action on health care and that will and advance our agenda for health care change.<\/p>\n ? We hope to build an army of activists around the country who understand what we are working for and what we are working to prevent and who will enlist their neighbors, co-workers, friends and family in the campaign.<\/p>\n ? We have a communications plan that aims to fill the American public spheres with our message. The plan will be built on earned media; the new media of Internet and blogs and paid advertising on TV and print.<\/p>\n ? We will develop a research and policy capacity that enables us to influence the larger national dialogue and media coverage, and to shape the content of any final reform.<\/p>\n ? We will organize Americans to educate members of Congress about our Statement of Common Purpose and to demonstrate public support for policies that work to achieve quality, affordable health care for everyone in our nation.<\/p>\n ? We aim to raise or leverage over $40 million dollars.<\/p>\n HCAN is an unprecedented effort to put contemporary and traditional organizing techniques to work in an election year to build a nationwide movement for health care reform, a movement we hope will be as large and sweeping as the movements that lead to social security and civil rights. We want health care to be the most important issue in this election. We want people to vote for candidates on the basis of their position on health care reform. While will not endorse candidates, we do intend to make their views on health care reform known and hold those who say they agree with us accountable when a new President and Congress take office in January 2009.<\/p>\n I hope that you can join us at City Hall today.<\/p>\n Marc Stier<\/p>\n Health Care Campaign Manager Today, July 8, in Washington and about 50 cities around the country, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Erie, a new movement for health care reform will be born, Health Care for America Now! (HCAN). The Philadelphia HCAN kickoff will be held at 1 pm in the Caucus Room (Room 401), at City Hall. Confirmed speakers include \u2022 Liz McElroy, political director, AFL-CIO Central Labor Council. \u2022 Randy Barge a Presbyterian minister and board member of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project. \u2022 Carolyn Banks, a member of Acorn who has had issues related to access to health care. \u2022 David Grande, MD, of National Physician\u2019s Alliance We have invited the members of City Council, and Philadelphia State house and Senate members. HCAN is being created by a large number of organizations nationally and in Pennsylvania. It is co-chaired nationally by SEIU and AFSCME and our Pennsylvania organization is being brought together by SEIU,\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-vd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5918,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions\/5918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSEIU PA State Council
\n(215) 880-6142<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"