Health Care Reform:
Seeking Solutions Through Interfaith Collaboration
Get Involved!
Resources
Informative Links
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Current Programs Health Care Reform |
UU Voices for Healthcare - Get Involved!
Do you have healthcare experience or an important story to tell? Would you like to help organize the healthcare team in your congregation? Your congregation can be involved in the UU Voices for Healthcare Project. UU Voices for Health Care Sign-up Sheet.
Healthcare Stories Needed: Submitting stories about the everyday impacts of our healthcare system is the single-most effective way to build the healthcare movement. Host a story-gathering session in your congregation using our easy outline or distribute our story forms during coffee hour and mail us copies of your congregation’s responses. And keep an eye on this website – we’ll soon be collecting stories through the web!
Open Healthcare Conference Call: Every first and third Monday of the month, UU’s from across the state are invited to discuss latest updates & action alerts with UULM staff and volunteer leaders. Make sure your congregation is represented in these important and informative meetings! The next call is Monday, July 6th at 6pm. For call-in information, e-mail Betty Jeanne or call 916-849-3500.
NEW Curriculum: An adaptable six-session healthcare curriculum is available to educate and empower UU’s to take action within and beyond their congregations. Topics include healthcare history in the United States, healthcare around the world, healthy equity, understanding single-payer, and more. Order your copy by e-mail .
Volunteers Needed: Are you, or fellow congregants, able to pitch in a few hours for the UULM healthcare campaign? Tasks include outreach phone calls, research, photocopying, data entry, and more. There is something for everyone, and we’ll work around your schedule/location. e-mail Betty Jeanne or call 916-849-3500 to help!
The Debate over a Public Plan Option
“Any legislation passed by Congress must include a robust and affordable public option that is available to every American, and that provides coverage on par with any plan put forth by private insurers. This is not a moment to act cautiously, or to hide behind hollow buzz words or skeleton programs. The Congress must act boldly to develop a health care bill that the public will be proud of, and which will lay the foundation for our nation’s future economic growth. A competitive public option must be at the heart of this proposal.”- Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair, Representative Lynn Woolsey
The UULM Healthcare Reform Steering Committee supports the ultimate goal of a single payer universal healthcare system and believes that a robust public option must be put in federal legislation currently under consideration. A strong public option is a crucial part of President Obama’s healthcare reform agenda.
There is a healthy debate in the progressive community over whether a public option is a blessing or a curse.
- Supporters of the public option want to make sure that the strongest and most inclusive public option possible is passed. See Healthcare for America Now’s Fact Sheet warning about the dangers of the “trigger proposals”.
- Those opposed to the public option include the insurance industry on the conservative side, and also some single payer advocates on the progressive side who believe that a public option will fail and in the process will undermine future efforts to achieve a single payer system. See information opposing the public option presented to the Progressive Caucus opposed to the public option.
UULM has been part of fostering Unity dialogues among those with differing opinions.
On June 2nd, UULM proudly co-convened a Healthcare Unity Workshop for leaders from throughout the healthcare movement. Participants included representatives from Healthcare for All, PICO California, the Center for Policy Analysis, Organizing for America, Women’s Health Rights Coalition, National Physicians Alliance, Wellstone Democratic Club, Health Access-California, and more.
The event, held at the First UU Society of San Francisco, was facilitated by the Universal Health Care Action Network, which promotes unity across the spectrum of universal health care activists, and helps groups find common ground, minimize tensions over differences, and become more effective health care advocates. Participants shared their organizational strategies, reflected on their challenges in organizing for healthcare reform, and identified opportunities for collaboration in the critical months ahead.
As the Unity Workshop proved, UULM plays an important role in building bridges within the healthcare movement, and developing interfaith and secular relationships that – together – can win the healthcare reform we so desperately need.
CA Single Payer Universal Health Care Act Passes First Hurdle
UUs have stated that access to comprehensive healthcare for all is an intrinsic part of promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
A "single-payer" health coverage system, refers to who pays the medical bill. With single-payer, there are no longer hundreds of for-profit insurance companies making decisions about your health based on their stock-holders. There is a single, government agency that makes sure all citizens get the care they need. Many consider this the only true definition of "Universal health Care," and it is the model followed by almost all other industrialized nations in the world today.
UU's across the nation are working toward a just medical care system. Many UUs are active in their state's “Health Care for All” chapters, championing the publicly financed insurance fund (single payer solution) such as California's SB-810.
Senator Mark Leno's Universal Health Care Act, SB-810, is nearly identical to the former Senator Sheila Kuehl's SB-840. Like its predecessor, the Universal Health Care Act would provide medical, dental, vision, hospitalization, and prescription drug benefits. It is co-authored by 45 legislators of both houses. While it passed its first hurdle - a 7-4 vote of the Senate Health Committee, due to the budget crisis it was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee and will not be taken up again in 2009. It can still be brought back in 2010.
What follows in the quality of our helping when we begin to know ourselves beyond separateness? .We are not so much helping out, then, because it is "me" needing to tend to "you". We're helping out because it is "us". The more we understand and dwell in that truth, the more we serve simply in the way of things. If any of "Us" needs help. If one of "Our" arms gets caught in a door, naturally we use the other of "Our" arms to set it free. Helping happens not because it's been weighed and considered; it happens because the barriers to its lawful and automatic expression have fallen away.
- from How Can I Help?
by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman
Healthcare Glossary of Terms
Practical definition for all the buzz words and lingo that you'll run into working with healthcare reform.
Glossary (by UULM-CA)
Resources for Worship
Themes of Health and Healing
Packed with hymns, quotes, and readings - you can use this resource package as you put together services and events.
Important websites for ongoing healthcare policy information and action alerts:
UU Legislative Ministry
717 K St # 514
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 441-0018
admin@uulmca.org