It's Our Healthcare!

Seniors, Consumer Advocates, Health Advocates, Communities of Faith, and Labor Unite to Ensure That the People of California Have a Strong Voice to Shape Healthcare Reform

Local 521 has been involved since February 2007  with a consumer-based healthcare reform campaign along with a coalition of organizations representing a broad swath of Californians.

Together, the groups, which include AARP California, California ACORN, California Alliance for Retired Americans, California Black Health Network, California Council of Churches IMPACT, California Labor Federation, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, CALPIRG, Congress of California Seniors, Consumers Union, Health Access California, Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, National Council of La Raza, Service Employees International Union , Greenlining Institute and California Partnership, have more than 8 million California members.

The campaign has included online and person-to-person outreach to gather Californians’ healthcare stories and concerns, satellite-linked town halls across the state to learn about the issues and proposed solutions, house parties to bring neighbors, friends and families together to discuss the problems with our healthcare system, and many opportunities for individual Californians to communicate to our elected leaders.

The groups have come together around specific goals, and support and oppose ideas and proposals that are currently a part of the health reform debate.

We’re the largest healthcare union in the state and in the nation, said President of SEIU Local 1021 Damita Davis-Howard, representing the Service Employees International Union, which represents 650,000 healthcare and other service workers in California. We’ve seen it all and we know things need to change, whether we’re talking about a child who goes deaf because she didn’t have access to timely treatment for ear infections or a family that is overwhelmed by medical bills and goes bankrupt because their coverage is inadequate.

The "It’s Our Healthcare!" coalition is committed to ensuring health reform happens this year and will continue to weigh in to shape the debate. These organizations will dedicate significant staff and financial resources to ensure that the consumer has a prominent voice in shaping health reform this year.

For more information on It’s Our Healthcare, visit www.itsourhealthcare.org .

 

Activists and consumers gathered in downtown Bakersfield to call for healthcare reform as part of the It's Our Healthcare! Road to Reform.

 
Delores Huerta of the Delores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, talks to other healthcare reform supporters at Bakersfield's Road to Reform rally.